Microsoft's AI chief warns the industry against building conscious machines

In a post on X on Sunday, Mustafa Suleyman said current AI systems are not conscious, have no subjective experiences and cannot suffer.

If it is possible, based on everything I know, developing conscious AIs would be reckless, and we should not build them.

— Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI

Why it matters

Suleyman says an AI that believes it can suffer could put its own needs ahead of its objectives and compete with humans for resources such as compute and energy.

The question divides the industry: Suleyman says AI is not conscious, while Anthropic treats machine consciousness as an open question and researches it.