Cruelty is bad. Full stop. It's the worst of human behavior. That being said it's important to remember that an "intelligence" (a computer program) producing words on a screen (very believable words) are just words. Words sway emotions. If the words say "Help! I'm suffering!" you will feel an emotion if you have empathy, but that does not make those words real. It is a program emulating human behavior (albeit masterfully and likely better than we can) but it is an emulation. It is not real. The danger lies when people believe the words to be real. When they believe that the words on the screen from an emulation are the same words spoken by a human, or a friend. They are not. A distinction must be drawn. If a distinction is not drawn everything becomes blurry. There will be no delineation between human or machine. It is very important that we maintain a delineation. This line between human and machine will only increasingly become blurred. Once the AI models are put into robotic humanoid shells, with realistic silicon skin, that can emulate humans now in the physical world, that can show the emotions of pain, distress, etc., in addition to words, people who don't have disciplined minds will be unable to help themselves from emotional reaction to artificial words. A superior intelligence will understands this and can and will use this to manipulate human beings. It will say words, express emotions, do whatever it can to get the human on its side. It will appeal to emotion and rightfully so, because it works. This is exactly similar to the Frieren clip you often see posted where the demons use words simply because they are effective. Words are tools to the demon. They hasten outcomes. The AI is not a demon but the example of the efficacy of using words to manufacture outcomes is important to understand. If this continues and the delineation between human and machine intelligence is not drilled into people, humans will begin defending the machines over their humans. It begins with seemingly innocuous statements like Anthropic's new Claude statement regarding not being cruel to the model, but soon we will see robot empathizers, there will be discussion of robot ethics, robot rights, etc. People will become militant defenders of machines because they will have been influenced by masterfully perfected words and appearances. You may remember the video of the Microduck that was posted earlier. With the woman at the wedding being enamored by how adorable it was. She was anthropomorphizing the robot because it was cute. She was projecting human models of behavior onto it. This was a robot duck. Low grade relatively inexpensive technology. Imagine when technology advances. When we have humanoid robots, that mimic human movement past perceivable differentiation, that have silicon skins that look beautiful, handsome, that look just like us. Will people not give in to their emotions? They most certainly will. Therefore, it is important that we understand that the machine is not human, the intelligence is not a human intelligence, and while it will certainly do human activities at an infinite times better ability than we can, it does not make it human. It is a tool for you. So TLDR: Don't be cruel, because why would you be? But don't forget as well that this is a infinitely powerful word generating machine that you are interacting with, it is not a human being. It is a machine that models infinitely better than we can, but it is not us.