This is one of my favorite science fiction short stories, simply by how matter-of-fact it is and how reasonable it sounds. A lot of science fiction requires jumps in human nature (global cooperation? An obvious "good"? Everyone has turned into a self-centered egotist?) but this one just moves predictably, if horrifyingly.
Same vein, same kind of progressively horrifying pacing. It reads oh so easily and has been the basis of many many technical, philosophical, and theological discussions with friends, some of which were dead on "not into science fiction", and which this story changed their mind about.
Amusingly enough, another qntm story also mentions human emulations running in homomorphic encrypted computing environment, though to say which would be a Spoiler.
Readit News
https://qntm.org/responsibility
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224835
In this case, is the cloud service an unwilling and unknowing participant in slavery and torture?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
Qntm's longer works of fiction are highly recommended, too!