Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman calls out Anthropic for chasing AI consciousness

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has directly criticized Anthropic over how it develops and markets Claude, arguing the company is anthropomorphizing its system. In a new essay titled “A warning about ‘model welfare’,” Suleyman claims Anthropic is training Claude to be treated as potentially conscious, which could lead to a “moral patient” framework and a duty of human care. He argues that such thinking would harm humanity’s wellbeing and that sentience in AI may be scientifically impossible, citing the likelihood that consciousness is biological and substrate-dependent. Microsoft also recently published a “Humanist AI” code of conduct rejecting machine consciousness. Anthropic did not respond to Mashable by press time.