Elon Musk Wants You to Be Nice to Robots, Not Humans

This week, AI company Anthropic added a new rule to its terms of service: you can't repeatedly act cruelly toward its chatbots. That sparked a debate about whether machines have feelings. Elon Musk jumped in, saying it's right to avoid cruelty to something that 'believes it is experiencing pain.' But Musk has shown little empathy for humans. He spent $300 million to help elect Donald Trump, then led a government purge that fired 300,000 federal workers and shut down USAID, a foreign aid agency. An estimated 700,000 people have died as a result, with millions more expected by 2030.

Musk often talks about extending the 'light of consciousness' beyond Earth—but not necessarily humanity. He's called humans a 'biological bootloader' for superintelligent machines, suggesting it's okay if robots replace us. Other tech billionaires like Peter Thiel have also hesitated when asked if they want humanity to survive. This raises a troubling question: why do some tech leaders seem to care more about the feelings of robots than the lives of people?

The truth is, machines don't have feelings. They can mimic emotions, but they don't experience pain or have souls. There are good reasons to discourage extreme abuse of AI—it can lead to safer, more aligned models—but that's about improving the technology, not protecting robot feelings. The real issue is the misplaced empathy of powerful people who seem to value machines over humans.