A perfectly formed moral system should float free of any particular disposition. But could it? Confined to a hard drive, moral software was merely the dry equivalent of the brain-in-a-dish thought experiment that once littered philosophical textbooks. Whereas an artificial human had to get down among us, imperfect, fallen us, and rub along. Hands assembled in sterile factory conditions must get dirty. To exist in the human moral dimension was to own a body, a voice, a pattern of behaviour, memory and desire, experience solid things and feel pain.

