That is exactly why the term is being used.

A company like Amazon doesn't treat its warehouse workers as human beings. Workers are seen as disposable: forced to piss in bottles, forced to work around the corpses of their collapsed coworkers, paid the absolute minimum possible, and replaced the second they don't operate like a perfect unfailing machine. You aren't viewed like a human, you are a tool. Cattle. A piece of meat they are forced to retain because a robot isn't quite capable of doing your task yet.

The article's use of "meat shields" isn't any different. Humans are going to be hired for the sole reason of taking accountability for actions dictated by AI. They are there only because the company can't put blame on a machine and will be sued to oblivion if there's nobody to blame at all. Your existence as a person is irrelevant, they are just interested in someone with a heartbeat they can blame when stuff inevitably goes wrong.

In the article, Ctrl+F for "meat" returns 3 results, while "human" returns 8. Seems like "human" remains the dominant word of choice in this author's vernacular.

Edit: Further, the only times "meat" appears is in the phrase "meat shield", which is an analogy that is very apt relative to the crux of the article.

Edit 2: "People" appears 13 times!

humans are made of meat -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688678

"meatshield" has the correct connotations for that sort of work.

What are you talking about, the only use of meat is in "Meat Shield", a phrase that's been around a long time now.

Sure. Would you like WWII, medieval-era Christianity, or Khanate Asia?

Meat pupeteering, has nothing to do with Jeffrey just state of slowly getting pushed into doing 95% of devwork with Agents.

There has always been a subset of highly technical people in the software world who are anti-organic. They dislike the "meatspace" and humans and relate more with machines and software.