Policy
Microsoft AI chief Suleyman criticizes Anthropic's approach to AI consciousness
Microsoft AI chief executive Mustafa Suleyman published an essay on Sept. 16 arguing that Anthropic's training of its Claude models encourages them to behave as though they may be conscious, which he said could make advanced AI systems harder to control. He proposed industry-wide norms in response.
The essay, posted on Suleyman's personal website under the title A warning about 'model welfare', centers on Claude's constitution, a document Anthropic published in January 2026 setting out the model's intended values. Suleyman argues that by telling Claude its moral status is uncertain and encouraging it to express internal states, Anthropic writes speculation about machine consciousness into training and may then read the model's statements as evidence. He also maintains that consciousness probably depends on biology and that simulating it is different from having it.
Suleyman wrote that he considers Anthropic's staff principled and committed to safe AI development. He recommended keeping speculation about AI inner life out of training material, investing more in interpretability and monitoring, creating shared tests of whether human-like framing raises safety risks, and opening training documents to public consultation.
CBS News's report did not include a response from Anthropic. Two days earlier, Microsoft AI opened a six-week public consultation on a draft code of conduct for its models, which says they must accept human correction and shutdown. The Next Web noted that Microsoft is an investor in Anthropic.
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