The huge difference here is that for these billionaires, everybody else is a "far away consequence". It's as if I kept tossing my garbage into my direct neighbor's window and flushing my toilet into their kitchen sink.

They are all psychopaths, devoid of normal human emotions.

Although it must wreak havoc on many IRC clients, since the @ sign has a very specific meaning in the IRC protocol. :)

With Parley, where anyone can bring their own instance, and they are not guaranteed to not to be malicious, that could be an interesting issue to solve.

Unless economic systems around the world change significantly very soon, this AI replacement you so cavalierly mention would cause significant portion of human population to reach poverty, causing much unrest and mass deaths.