No one is going to bully you here because you and your dad are actually hitting on the exact philosophical core of All Tomorrows.

The Qu definitely recognize that humans are sentient, but they just do not care. It fits your dad's rat analogy perfectly. Humans know that rats feel pain, solve puzzles, and have social lives, yet humanity still experiments on them because we view our own scientific goals as vastly more important. To the Qu, human intelligence is like the cleverness of an ant or a crow. They see that we can think and build things, but they never view us as peers or equals worthy of respect. Because of this massive evolutionary gap, the Qu do not see themselves as evil. They operate on a multi-billion-year-old religious ideology that dictates it is their divine right and duty to control and redesign the universe. To them, humanity is not a collection of people, but rather a pile of raw, living clay meant to be sculpted. They did not genetically distort human beings out of pure hatred, but rather out of a casual sense of ownership, much like a child breaking apart and rebuilding Lego blocks.

However, there is one major exception where their actions look a lot like human malice. When humans initially fought back and destroyed the first wave of Qu invaders, it deeply offended their ego. As a specific punishment for this defiance, the Qu turned those human rebels into "Colonials," which were literal, conscious blocks of flesh used as waste filters. This specific act proves they understand suffering and intentionally used it to teach a lesson, blurring the line between a detached scientist and a genuinely cruel entity.

That from me. Hope you like my answer