Some of these themes are indeed explored in David Brin's excellent Uplift seriers (Sundiver, Startide Rising and The Uplift War). Actually there are like 6 or 7 books, but I've only read the first three. Essentially, all ancient species that select other species for uplift to full sentience require a period of indentured servancy (in some cases read: slavery) for all candidate species. Except, of course, us noble humans, which is the hardest part to swallow. We allow dolphins and chimpanzees to pilot starships and do archaeology on distant worlds in Brin's books, while in the real world we do experiments on chimpanzees and use dolphins to look for limpet mines in Navy Seal operations.

Not sure where I was going with this, but I am wondering if any of you have read these books and what you think about them.