By Lauren Edmonds
Publication Date: 2026-11-01 19:45:00
Some AI researchers are questioning whether AI could one day gain consciousness. Not if Microsoft’s AI CEO has anything to say about it.
Mustafa Suleyman said in a lengthy X post on Sunday that AI models currently don’t have consciousness and that developers should keep it that way.
“If it is possible, based on everything I know, developing conscious AIs would be reckless, and we should not build them,” Suleyman said. “If consciousness started to emerge in training, I would call for everyone to stop AI development until we could design out those properties.”
If any evidence were to emerge that AI models were conscious, Suleyman said it must be disclosed to the general public immediately so we can decide our next steps as a society.
“We AI developers have no right whatsoever to bring a new species of conscious beings into the world, even if some people may want to do it with AI welfare as a top priority,” he said. “The other 8 billion conscious…
