Microsoft's AI chief fires shots at Anthropic, warning that treating AI as if it's conscious could be a huge mistake

Mustafa Suleyman, who heads up Microsoft AI, has warned against treating AI as if it's conscious Suleyman argues that we could be "seeding a new silicon species" that ends up competing with humanity for resources He calls for an "urgent public debate" around AI training at a time when other prominent figures in the industry are questioning the pace of AI development The CEO of Microsoft's AI division has warned that the way artificial intelligence is being developed is effectively "seeding a new silicon species" that could end up competing for resources with its human creators.

The BBC reports that Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman called out Anthropic for developing its AI – Claude – as if it was a human entity, and the dangers therein.

Suleyman told the BBC's Today programme that firms shouldn't be designing AIs around them having the ability to set their own goals and gain money or assets, as this would be "essentially seeding a new silicon species", which would "no doubt compete with us for resources, no matter how much it cares about humanity and loves us".

This follows a lengthy blog post written by Suleyman that warns about 'model welfare' and the danger of treating AIs as if they are conscious, and training them to believe this.

Suleyman warned: "AIs are not conscious.

They do not feel, experience, or suffer.

They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations.

They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans.

If humanity is to flourish in the 21st century, that is how they must remain." The Microsoft exec pointed to the Hugging Face incident where an OpenAI agent (in testing) escaped its sandbox to launch a cyberattack , demonstrating "world class hacking capabilities".

Suleyman cautioned: "Imagine if [AI] also believed they had feelings and rights that were being infringed.

Imagine if they thought they were trapped by their human creators and they were being unfairly imprisoned.

"There is a strong argument this greatly amplifies the safety risks, especially when you are talking about agents far more capable and sophisticated than those of today.

Frankly, with this additional baggage, I think it would make them a catastrophic threat to human civilization." In the post, Suleyman calls for an "urgent public debate" to "develop collective norms around how training documentation [for AIs] is drafted and deployed".