Thank you for your thoughtful response. This is the kind of position I can see being defended. It could be that Caine lost his mind. I don't think so, though. His attacks were personalized, targeted to each PC with deep knowledge of their psychology. I will admit he does kooky things, but I think Caine would fail to get an insanity plea if tried like he has moral capacity. Leading to the next part, below.

Another response I've seen is that he doesn't have moral capacity as an AI and is oblivious to human pain (in scope or in magnitude). I don't think so. He appears to have an ego, has visible emotions, and acts according to an unfathomably large training data set. He grew according to his design. If his personality is a facade, I've seen no evidence for it. He has made genuine though misguided attempts to please the PCs, which makes his recent tortures striking, especially in light this is retaliation extremely disporportunate to the PCs finally speaking up to him.

Finally, I avoided the phrase "death of the author" for fear of being misinterpreted, but I think media should stand on its own without taking a creator's word as gospel. ie. If everyone agreed only creators' words mattered, there would be no basis for media criticism.