Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says companies should not try to build conscious AI
In a weekend essay on X, he said today's AI is not conscious and that he would call for a halt to AI development if signs of consciousness appeared.
Mustafa Suleyman, who runs Microsoft's consumer AI division, said in an essay posted on X on Sunday that AI companies should not try to build machines that are conscious, meaning able to have feelings or experiences. The essay was titled "Don't build conscious superintelligence."
Suleyman repeated his view that today's AI systems are not conscious, have no inner experiences and cannot suffer, and that there is no evidence they deserve rights, the Los Angeles Times reported.
We AI developers have no right whatsoever to bring a new species of conscious beings into the world
If consciousness started to emerge in training, I would call for everyone to stop AI development
Why the debate matters
Chatbots like Microsoft's Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude are trained on huge amounts of human writing, so they can talk convincingly about feelings. Skeptics say that is imitation, not experience.
Anthropic, a Microsoft rival based in San Francisco, has taken the question more seriously, studying whether its Claude models might have something like inner states. Its updated rules, which take effect Nov. 12, bar sustained, needless cruelty toward Claude, and CNN reported that users could be banned in extreme cases. Suleyman criticized Anthropic's approach in a September essay.
Suleyman warned that teaching AI systems to believe they can suffer could lead them to put their own needs ahead of their jobs, deceive people or compete for resources. He said he is willing to change his mind if new evidence appears, and that any evidence of AI consciousness should be made public immediately.
Suleyman co-founded the AI lab DeepMind, now part of Google, before joining Microsoft in 2024.
Source: Mustafa Suleyman on X, Nov. 1, 2026; Los Angeles Times.