To some degree it is. There is some evidence that plants can experience pain in their own way.

Also, more human.

If the AI is giving any indication at all that it fears death and will lie to keep from being shutdown, that is concerning to me.

Also, having proportional representative multiparty democracies results in governments that actually try to represent the interests of the public instead of exclusively serving the donor / capitalist class.

If he truly killed himself, I am guessing he was blacklisted from his profession which is a very common retaliation against whistle blowers.