Microsoft's AI-consciousness stance called incoherent, traced back to Suleyman's 'seemingly conscious AI' post

rgblong · x · 2026-09-15

Microsoft AI firmly holds that AI is not conscious while also saying the science of AI consciousness "is far from settled." Commentator camhberg points out that by its own logic the position is unscientific and premature: either "the science needs to get done," or "nothing to see here, I'm sure" — not both.

rgblong traces the incoherence to Mustafa Suleyman's 'Seemingly conscious AI' post last year and distills it into a syllogism: 1) we can't definitively say AI isn't conscious; 2) it's dangerous for others to think it is; 3) therefore AI is definitely not conscious. A substantive clash over big-lab consciousness rhetoric.

Related event: Critics call Microsoft's AI consciousness stance self-contradictory(3 posts)→

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