Elon Musk targeted Anthropic philosopher Amanda Askell on X, questioning her AI ethics role due to her lack of children. Askell responded, emphasizing her care for humanity’s future, while Musk’s criticism of Anthropic’s AI ethics took a more personal turn, highlighting a broader debate on defining AI morality.

Elon Musk went after Anthropic philosopher Amanda Askell in a string of posts on X, questioning her credibility to shape AI ethics—largely because she doesn’t have children. The exchange unfolded on February 14, hours after The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy profile on Askell’s role in building Claude’s moral framework.Responding to the WSJ piece, Musk posted: “Those without children lack a stake in the future.” He followed it up with a jab at Askell’s ex-husband, Will MacAskill, the well-known effective altruist, claiming MacAskill had once offered to help write the moral guidelines for Grok, xAI’s chatbot. Musk dismissed the idea, writing: “Constitutions should not be written by hypocrites.”He also threw in a Simpsons-style prank call joke—”Paging Amanda Hugandkiss”—with a laughing emoji and a link to Grok.

Askell pushes back with a measured response

Askell didn’t ignore the thread. In a post on X, she wrote: “I think it depends on how much you care about people in general vs. your own kin.” She added that she does intend to have kids but already feels a strong personal stake in the future “because I care a lot about people thriving, even if they’re not related to me.”In a separate post, she addressed the broader reaction to the WSJ profile, noting that many people were trying to guess her political leanings. “I try to treat my personal political views as a potential source of bias,” she said, “and not as something it would be appropriate to try to train models to adopt.”

Musk’s Anthropic criticism isn’t new—but the personal tone is

Musk has taken shots at Anthropic before. Just a day earlier, following the company’s $30 billion Series G funding round, he called its AI “misanthropic and evil,” claiming Claude discriminates against white and Asian users, heterosexuals, and men. “You were doomed to this fate when you chose your name,” he wrote, playing on the Anthropic-Misanthropic wordplay he’s used before.

But singling out Askell by name—and dragging in her personal life and former marriage—marked a sharper, more personal turn in his ongoing feud with the company.

Why this matters: the fight over who gets to define AI morality

The clash touches a deeper nerve in the AI industry. Askell, an Oxford-educated philosopher, has spent years crafting Claude’s personality and ethical guidelines—a 30,000-word instruction document Anthropic published last month. Musk, meanwhile, has pushed his pronatalist worldview as central to long-term thinking, repeatedly arguing that declining birth rates pose an existential threat.The thread drew predictably split reactions. Some echoed Musk’s “skin in the game” argument. Others pointed out that caring about the future doesn’t require biological parenthood. A few just wanted to talk about the Simpsons joke.