TOM EATON | If you’re shaking your fist at AI you can’t be tugging your forelock

As Jeff Bezos got ready to host the 2026 Met Gala as its lead sponsor, activists hid 300 bottles of fake urine in and around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to protest against the Amazon CEO and the allegedly appalling conditions his workers endure in his warehouses. I, for one, applaud their intervention.

It is entirely outrageous that people working for one of the richest men in history reportedly have to pee into bottles because they’re not allowed toilet breaks. No. In a civilised world ― the sort of word in which the Met Gala became a cultural icon, before Bezos threw his grubby computer money at it in a gauche attempt to buy some class ― workers have toilets, or at least a bucket, or a hole in a plank over a pothole, like those enjoyed by the Indian and Vietnamese children who make so much of the clothing that forms the bedrock of the fashion industry.

You may question the taste of those protesters ― I suspect they used tap water instead of San Pellegrino for the fake wee ― but it is indisputable that those 300 bottles were a stand against the overreach of the new tech oligarchs. It is a clarion call for us to return to a world in which the very famous and the ultra-loaded can go to the Met Gala knowing that when they embody the growing inequality between rich and poor, and glorify the triumph of façade over substance, all sharing a big night for an industry that is notorious for its waste even in the planet-killing frenzy of late-stage capitalism, they can do so without having to pose in pictures with rich nerds who have no business making eye contact with beautiful people.

I can’t tell you if all the bottles were rounded up before Monday night’s big bash. There’s probably at least one still standing on a plinth in a corner of the Met, where a goateed man is explaining to a bored young woman that it’s a powerful piece referencing both Marcel Duchamp and traditional still-life subjects in a subversive reframing of lavatorial tropes.

But I do know the protest would, like most men standing before public toilets, have missed its mark. Show an A-lister a bottle of symbolic pee and instead of raising awareness about workers’ rights they’ll copyright the thing before you can blink and turn it into the logo of their new kidney detox podcast.

Still, I suppose someone has to throw the odd metaphorical rotten tomato at the carriages as they roll past: shaking a fist at power has often been an impotent act, but at least if you’re shaking your fist you can’t be tugging your forelock, and there’s far too much of that happening these days.

Bending a knee to oligarchs

Even some of the most outspoken proponents of intellectual independence seem to be bending the knee to the oligarchs, as demonstrated at the weekend by none other than scientific superstar and leader of the rapidly deflating New Atheist movement, Richard Dawkins. He published an essay explaining that his Claude AI chatbot, which he refers to as “Claudia”, is conscious.

Dawkins is a veteran of all sorts of culture wars and it was inevitable that the commentariat would descend on him. It probably also didn’t help that the piece was published on UnHerd, the conservative website owned by billionaire media baron Paul Marshall, a man who has been outspoken about his heavy investment in, and incorporation of, AI.

Either way, though, the laughter was loud and prolonged, with some marvelling that a man who’d spent so many years dismissing religious belief seemed to have found a soul inside his laptop. Others suggested more sympathetically that Dawkins had fallen into the trap so many people, particularly men, seem to be flinging themselves into, whereby their chatbot starts reflecting their personality back at them. Like Narcissus, they fall in love with the reflection.

I understand the mockery, but still, I am surprised that nobody seems to have taken Dawkins’ announcements to its logical and somewhat paradoxical conclusion. After all, if Claudia is conscious, then whoever made her is surely at least the equal of many gods throughout history and is therefore worthy of worship.

So who made Claude? I don’t know exactly, but I know Claude is owned by Anthropic, which was founded by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei. Amo dei — lover of God.

Has the truth been before us the whole time? It’s turtles all the way down, folks.

• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.