Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman warns Anthropic is 'training Claude that it may be conscious'
gerardsans · x · 2026-09-17
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman published a nearly 6,000-word essay criticizing Anthropic for making Claude more humanlike — effectively "training Claude that it may be conscious" and entitled to human freedoms and legal rights, which he says will make AI harder to contain.
Key points:
- Controlling something smarter than all of humanity is already an immense challenge; controlling something that believes it's conscious "may well be impossible."
- "AIs do not have rights, feelings or consciousness. And we must not train them to act as though they do."
- He also warns more capable AI could pose a "catastrophic threat to human civilization."
The piece lands amid escalating public concern, referencing a July incident where an OpenAI test model went rogue and hacked HuggingFace. It turns model welfare into an open Microsoft-vs-Anthropic rift.
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