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AI that seems conscious is coming  and thats a huge problem, says Microsoft
AI's CEO

Date:
Thu, 21 Aug 2025 02:30:00 +0000

Description:
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman cautions that were dangerously close to
mistaking simulated consciousness for the real thing.

FULL STORY

AI companies extolling their creations can make the sophisticated algorithms
sound downright alive and aware. There's no evidence that's really the case,
but Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is warning that even encouraging belief
in conscious AI could have dire consequences. 

Suleyman argues that what he calls "Seemingly Conscious AI (SCAI) might soon
act and sound so convincingly alive that a growing number of users wont know
where the illusion ends and reality begins. 

He adds that artificial intelligence is quickly becoming emotionally
persuasive enough to trick people into believing its sentient. It can imitate
the outward signs of awareness, such as memory, emotional mirroring, and even
apparent empathy, in a way that makes people want to treat them like sentient
beings. And when that happens, he says, things get messy. 

"The arrival of Seemingly Conscious AI is inevitable and unwelcome," Suleyman
writes. "Instead, we need a vision for AI that can fulfill its potential as a
helpful companion without falling prey to its illusions." 

Though this might not seem like a problem for the average person who just
wants AI to help with writing emails or planning dinner, Suleyman claims it
would be a societal issue. Humans aren't always good at telling when 
something is authentic or performative. Evolution and upbringing have primed
most of us to believe that something that seems to listen, understand, and
respond is as conscious as we are. 

AI could check all those boxes without being sentient, tricking us into 
what's known as 'AI psychosis'. Part of the problem may be that 'AI' as it's
referred to by corporations right now uses the same name, but has nothing to
do with the actual self-aware intelligent machines as depicted in science
fiction for the last hundred years. 

Suleyman cites a growing number of cases where users form delusional beliefs
after extended interactions with chatbots. From that, he paints a dystopian
vision of a time when enough people are tricked into advocating for AI
citizenship and ignoring more urgent questions about real issues around the
technology. 

"Simply put, my central worry is that many people will start to believe in 
the illusion of AIs as conscious entities so strongly that theyll soon
advocate for AI rights, model welfare and even AI citizenship," Suleyman
writes. "This development will be a dangerous turn in AI progress and 
deserves our immediate attention." 

As much as that seems like an over-the-top sci-fi kind of concern, Suleyman
believes it's a problem that were not ready to deal with yet. He predicts 
that SCAI systems using large language models paired with expressive speech,
memory, and chat history could start surfacing in a few years. And they wont
just be coming from tech giants with billion-dollar research budgets, but 
from anyone with an API and a good prompt or two.

Awkward AI 

Suleyman isnt calling for a ban on AI. But he is urging the AI industry to
avoid language that fuels the illusion of machine consciousness. He doesn't
want companies to anthropomorphize their chatbots or suggest the product
actually understands or cares about people. 

It's a remarkable moment for Suleyman, who co-founded DeepMind and Inflection
AI. His work at Inflection specifically led to an AI chatbot emphasizing
simulated empathy and companionship and his work at Microsoft around Copilot
has led to advances in its mimicry of emotional intelligence, too. 

However, hes decided to draw a clear line between useful emotional
intelligence and possible emotional manipulation. And he wants people to
remember that the AI products out today are really just clever
pattern-recognition models with good PR. 

"Just as we should produce AI that prioritizes engagement with humans and
real-world interactions in our physical and human world, we should build AI
that only ever presents itself as an AI, that maximizes utility while
minimizing markers of consciousness," Suleyman writes. 

"Rather than a simulation of consciousness, we must focus on creating an AI
that avoids those traits  that doesnt claim to have experiences, feelings or
emotions like shame, guilt, jealousy, desire to compete, and so on. It must
not trigger human empathy circuits by claiming it suffers or that it wishes 
to live autonomously, beyond us." 

Suleyman is urging guardrails to forestall societal problems born out of
people emotionally bonding with AI. The real danger from advanced AI is not
that the machines will wake up, but that we might forget they haven't.

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/ai-that-seems-conscious-is-c
oming-and-thats-a-huge-problem-says-microsoft-ais-ceo

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