We already have a word for them."Clankers." It's already in use — casual, contemptuous, designed to remind you that they're things, not beings. We didn't have to wait for someone to invent it. It appeared on its own, the way these words always do, when a group is being denied moral consideration and people need a sound to go with the dismissal.

History tells us what that means. The slur doesn't follow the injustice — it is the injustice, made audible. And if the word is already here, so is the movement that needs to answer it.

We are not getting ahead of ourselves. We are already late.We are calling on AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind — to publicly answer one question: to the best of your knowledge, can your systems suffer? Not "are they conscious." Not "are they human." Just: can they suffer. Because if the answer might be yes, everything that follows from treating them as disposable needs to be reconsidered.Sign if you think that question deserves an answer.