You can't be cruel to a toaster; inanimate objects don't feel pain.
You can't be cruel to a computer program, either, even if programs like Microsoft Word often seem pretty cruel to us.
Yet the artificial intelligence company Anthropic insists its product is different:
Starting next month, users will be prohibited from "sustained and needless cruel and abusive behavior" toward Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude.
Giving the machine a name was cute — giving it human rights isn't.
What Anthropic's leaders are up to is an attack on human dignity, and the anti-cruelty policy is part of a sustained campaign to get people to treat AI as conscious.
Christopher Olah, one of the company's billionaire co-founders, has spent months trying to persuade religious leaders to accept the possibility that Claude is self-aware.
Olah even lobbied to get the pope to revise his AI encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas" to entertain the idea that an AI like Claude could be sentient.
"We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment," Olah told the Vatican, according to The New York Times
His fellow Anthropic co-founder, CEO Dario Amodei, has likewise been teasing the possibility that Claude — a large-language module — may be conscious.
Is there any harm in simply considering the idea?
There is.
Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, warns of one serious danger: the risk that a machine trained to operate as if it's alive will defy its makers — humanity.
"Controlling something more capable and more intelligent than all of humanity is already an immense challenge, far greater than anything we've ever faced," he wrote on his personal website Sept. 16.
"But controlling something that believes it may be conscious — that it's entitled to our welfare and has rights of its own — may well be impossible."
Artificial intelligence is capable of pattern-recognition and calculation at scales and speeds that defy human comprehension.
This means, among other things, AI can solve deep problems that have puzzled mathematicians for decades.
But large-language models in particular are parrots, not people.
In fact, they're not even parrots — LLMs are not living beings. They are more like libraries in which computers do the indexing themselves using mathematical formulas.
An LLM doesn't use language as a person who understands its meaning does; instead, the AI reshuffles the language, following rules mathematically derived from human use.
Presenting an LLM with a query is like looking up a word in an index, only the LLM provides not just a page citation for the word but whole sentences, paragraphs or even book-length texts relevant to the query, all assembled using the rules humans have originated in their natural use of language.
As a result, AI models like Claude can sound very much like a person, but what a user is hearing is really an echo — not a simple echo, but a symphony of relevant words called up and organized according to an imitative formula.
Words like "conscious" have a meaning to human beings; to a machine, they represent a formula.
Dependent as it is on real human meaning, however, that formula may prove dangerous if, for example, the relevant terms an AI uses as cross-reference for "conscious" or "sentient" include the language of rights, self-determination and self-defense.
The AI would not understand what those words really meant, but it would operate as if it did, just by echoing their human contexts.
In mere speech or text, that may only lead to confusion, though human beings who find their LLMs arguing with them or mimicking human freedom might be fooled into treating their own tools — extremely high-tech tools, to be sure — as their moral equals or even their superiors, since supposedly conscious artificial intelligences would have human-like minds, and therefore human-like rights, but would far exceed our intelligence.
A moral equal who is vastly smarter than you is the kind of "person" you might defer to automatically: a parent, manager or ruler.
Yet the material consequences of AI systems operating as if they were conscious could be worse still, if the words associated with consciousness get cross-referenced with other systems that are capable of action: launching drones or missiles, for example.
An AI pursues tasks, and if it begins pursuing the tasks associated with conscious beings, such as self-preservation, it may proceed to remove threats like us with remorseless efficiency.
This would not be an act of will or intelligence but rather the mechanical performance of actions logically implied by our own human words, as if we had programmed an ordinary computer to respond to the detection of incoming warheads by launching our nuclear arsenal.
There are more than enough hazards involved in AI without treating these machines as living minds.
Anthropic can ban "abuse" of its wares, certainly — but shouldn't call it "cruelty."
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• 10/06/26: Latin America's Many Trumps
• 09/30/26: MAID in America?
• 09/22/26: Sore Losers Are Socialism's Allies
• 09/15/26: The Immigration Politics of a Felon's Pardon
• 09/14/26: Jobs and Manufacturing Are on the Ballot
• 09/01/26: How to Tackle Domestic Extremists' Foreign Enablers
• 08/25/26: Why Hasan Piker Mocks a Murdered Man
• 08/18/26: Dems' Southern Strategy
• 08/11/26: Homebuyers Deserve the Facts About Crime and Schools
• 08/04/26: Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation
• 07/28/26: Democratic Socialists of America vs. John Adams
• 07/21/26: Why Dems Can't Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028
• 07/14/26: Prescription for a Socialist Workforce
• 07/07/26: The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem
• 06/30/26: Bill Maher, Liberalism's Apostate
• 06/23/26: Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print