You might be alarmed to learn that a little-known group in America is being treated inhumanely, denied even the most basic human rights.

I refer to our society’s callous treatment of AI bots.

Who? AI bots are not an ethnic group, but the rapidly evolving species of advanced “artificial intelligence beings,” spawned in recent years by the high-tech demi-gods of Silicon Valley. Unbeknownst to most natural-born humans, profiteering corporations are already deploying millions of these “thinking machines” across our country, taking an ever-widening array of jobs that require a measure of cognitive, human-level abilities from architects to therapists, lawyers to journalists.

However, rather than focusing on the deep ethical and pragmatic questions that this techno-corporate displacement poses for real-life people, AI’s Brave New World developers are trying to divert social concern to the bots. A recent headline urgently asks, “Should AI Systems Have Rights?” A leading maker of those systems is proclaiming that society must be concerned about the “mental welfare” of bots. Meanwhile, corporate owners are urging that their machine creatures be given a moral status to ensure that they are “ethically treated.”

Excuse me, but who are these greed meisters to set ethical standards? The billionaires of tech have enriched themselves, not by any genius, but by ruthlessly exploiting workers, carelessly polluting our environment, arrogantly violating our laws, stealing from their competitors and consumers and bribing government officials. They are sleaze.

Besides, corporate bots need to go to the back of the line! Before we give rights to machines, let’s secure the rights that moneyed elites have denied to women, the poor, nature and democracy itself.

I am a product of George Washington University Law School, so I feel I have an insider’s right to comment on the super-elite law firms that’ve suddenly been kowtowing to President Donald Trump.

Well … actually, I only lasted a week-and-a-half in law school. Still, you don’t need to be a legal scholar to see that these butt-kissing, billion-dollar firms are — to use a judicial term — scuzz.

It’s certainly true that Trump is a vindictive, petty president who routinely turns his office into a weapon of personal political revenge. He especially despises lawyers who have defied his many blatantly illegal power grabs, so he’s been deploying the crushing force of big government to punish such prominent Democratic firms as Paul Weiss. Trump stripped security clearances from Weiss lawyers, barred them from entering federal buildings, and threatened to cancel their clients’ government contracts.

No one said battling a despot would be easy. But, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently put it, “If you’re not used to fighting and losing battles, then don’t become a lawyer.”

Rather than fight, the Weiss firm pathetically tucked their tail and ran whimpering to Trump, begging forgiveness for challenging his unconstitutional acts. They even made a $40 million payoff to get in Lord Donald’s good graces!

Senior partners in the Weiss firm, each of whom is paid some $20 million a year, are not only gutless, but greedy. They sold their integrity to a mobster like Trump, so he would “let them” keep drawing that fat check. It shows that the opposite of courage is not merely cowardice, but conformity.

If lawyers will so meekly abandon their own democratic rights, why would any of us pay them to stand up for ours?

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Jim Hightower is a nationally syndicated columnist.