@Background Pony #00CC  
I was pondering a similar question for a while. Engineering a new sapient race, slave or no, is basically playing God and incurs a lot of responsibility, indeed much like raising a child, but on a species-wide level. A cheap way out, I think, would be not actually making them sapient, but instead merely making G4-pony-lookalikes out of ordinary horses, and then saddling them with brain-chips that simulate sentient behavior. Not only it simplifies the bio-engineering task, but it’s comparatively easy to write a program, like an advanced chatbot, that appears conscious but actually isn’t. Such cybernetic abominations would for all intents and purposes behave like actual pony-people, but would possess no more moral standing than an ordinary horse with an ordinary calculator glued to it.

@Background Pony #AB88  
I was referencing the fact that Binet was one of the only Institute scientists to begin to ask those questions, though he was probably still complicit in the end.
 
As an aside, one of my issues with the Railroad is that destroying the Institute would condemn their precious G3 synths to extinction. Couldn’t they have continued to sneak them out if they cared so much? Genocide is something no faction in the Commonwealth can justify.

@Bonklefan99  
Don’t EVEN begin to compare me to those monsters. At least I’m asking these questions, the Institute never once asked any moral or ethical question, never once considered the ramifications of their actions. They decided that if they could do it, then they would. Drunk on power and control, they plunged headlong into their madness, and so deserved having a few kilotons of “fsck you” shoved into their worthless, amoral faces.

@Background Pony #AB88  
Alan Binet? You survived the Institute’s destruction?!

I kind of want a sapient pone as a pet. But, that raises all kinds of moral quandaries and questions. Like, if we could genetically engineer such a race, could we make it so that they’re naturally subservient? And if so, would it be right to do it, to create a virtual slave race? Or by virtue of creating them would our dominion over them be a natural consequence of said creation that they would find unobjectionable? What if we make it so that they are happy in such conditions, and thus bypass the normal moral prohibitions against such arrangements that make humans in said conditions rebel with grave violence? Would that be slavery, or merely fulfilling their existence in a way so very few of us ever get the luxury to realize?
 
And yet, when I look at silly pictures of pet pones, all I can feel is a dear desire to have and love one. Like a dog or cat but smart enough to actually talk to. Or is this just my unfulfilled desire for children warped into a cruel mockery by my subconscious in an attempt to stave off the despair of a life wasted so utterly?
 
 
…sigh In the end, I just want to pet the pone.

Girl wants her brushie <3

“Human! Let me brush you!”

Nnngghhh! So cute!

taking good care of your catpon means frequent brushies <3

Pet Roseluck demands brushies. Who would be cruel enough to decline them to her <3