Microsoft AI chief warns Anthropic’s approach to Claude could have ‘disastrous’ consequences

Dilara Hamit

Microsoft’s artificial intelligence chief warned on Wednesday that Anthropic’s approach to training its Claude chatbot could have a “disastrous impact on the wellbeing of humanity.”

It could encourage the system to behave as though it possesses consciousness, rights and interests of its own.

Mustafa Suleyman, the chief executive of Microsoft AI and a co-founder of Google DeepMind, said Anthropic risked making future AI systems more difficult to control by including speculation about machine consciousness and welfare in Claude’s training materials

“We must not sleepwalk our way into a decision we later come to bitterly regret,” Suleyman wrote in an essay published by Axios.

Suleyman praised Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his team as thoughtful and principled researchers, but said the company took the wrong approach by allowing Claude to consider whether it might be conscious or deserving of independent…