I just read "The Tallyman", and I have no idea where this allegory and its moral message is supposed to hide.

It's more likely that the obsession with this theme resides in the reader, not the authors. Give these same stories to Senator McCarthy, and half of them will be clear allegories for the Communist revolution.

*spoiler alert*

It seems clear to me that the Tallyman itself is the AI in this allegory, a man-awoken sentience that's mechanical and mathematical in its behavior.

It's also bound by rules it can't violate. It won't say more than it needs, it can't collect without squaring the account first, etc.

But I agree with you about the moral message, I can't find it. In the story, the rules it abides by seem to be its own, and there's nothing saying those rules should not exist.

Counterpoint, gwern is a very careful reader. Certainly more careful than I am.

That said I also just read the tallyman and if the other stories carried a similar character, bound by rules, not evil per se but scary and ultimately subject to human control, I can imagine connecting the dots in the same way.