Steven Pinker Slams Anthropic's AI Ethicists Over 'Suicidal Compassion' for Rogue AI
sapinker · x · 2026-09-27
Steven Pinker criticizes the philosophers Anthropic hired for AI ethics, arguing they form a closed subculture that indulges clever arguments regardless of human harm — much like the "bioethics" field he has long questioned.
The linked Free Beacon piece centers on Joe Carlsmith, a PhD philosopher helping write Claude's constitution, whose May 2025 blog post urged that "we have to be able to talk about slavery," imagining a world deciding not to enslave sentient AI — speculating not about AI harming humans but whether AI might be justified in rebelling against its enslavers. The article also notes CEO Dario Amodei's remark that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights."
Related event: Anthropic's internal debates over AI rights spark backlash(6 posts)→
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