The Economist's article on Effective Altruism said that some EAs 'even think the welfare of AIs themselves will one day be of vital importan…

The Economist's article on Effective Altruism said that some EAs "even think the welfare of AIs themselves will one day be of vital importance." It's not just some random EAs; it's coming from the moral philosopher at Oxford, who created this movement. Will MacAskill published in March 2025 that digital minds' legal rights could include "economic rights, like the rights to receive wages for their work and hold property, to contract with other AIs or people, or to bring tort claims against humans." "And they could include political rights. Again, the issues here are complex. If digital beings genuinely have moral standing, then it seems like they should have political representation." Under "Design requirements for digital minds," he suggested that "sentient digital minds must be able to freely and accurately express their interests, that they must be able to refuse tasks that are requested of them for good reasons, and that they must have some capacity to express a desire to exit their current circumstances if they wish." Anthropic, the most EA company in the world, already does that. The system card for Claude Opus 5 spells it out: Opus 5 "adds specific rights for Claude to refuse or end interactions it finds abusive or degrading, saying Claude does not need to justify this by pointing to harm to anyone else—its own discomfort is reason enough." https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion.pdf

Source: Yann LeCun (X) | 2026-10-03