Yes. Ultimately these are companies that are designing malfunctioning, dangerous products akin to computer viruses, but if they convince us the products themselves are alive and have goals then they can say "Claude did it" instead of "we did it."
I'm increasingly convinced that their push to make us believe that Claude is alive and free is to absolve themselves of responsibility when their "agents" do bad stuff they didn't foresee.
It's incredibly important to aggressively resist the idea that AI can be conscious or have "personhood," not only because it's as ridiculous as believing that a book can think, but because once this is accepted, "AI's interests" will very quickly be prioritized over humanity.
Note well, apparently Anthropic tried very hard to get the Vatican to alter the text of "Magnifica Humanitas" just prior to its release so that it would not deny AI personhood.
This is a major milestone for @curaffairs. One of our magazine's pieces, @alexskopic's great essay on the New Orleans Super Bowl, is featured in "The Best American Essays 2026." Most winners are from much older and more established publications like the New Yorker, Atlantic, etc.
