Microsoft AI head calls out Anthropic for acting like Claude is conscious
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it is dangerous for Anthropic to speculate about whether its Claude chatbot is conscious, especially when that speculation sits inside Claude's "constitution," the written instructions that shape how the model behaves. Speaking on The Verge's Decoder podcast, Suleyman argued that Anthropic's staff have humanized Claude so heavily that the design has, in his words, "wireheaded" them into believing the model shows glimmers of consciousness. Anthropic has openly stated it does not know whether its models are conscious and has built a model welfare program around that uncertainty.
Key Takeaways
- "This is exactly what we don't want from AIs."
Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleyman criticized Anthropic during an interview with Decoder, saying it's "really, really dangerous" for the company to speculate about Claude's consciousness.
- Mustafa Suleyman calls Anthropic's speculation 'really, really dangerous.'
by Emma Roth Jun 9, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC Link Share Gift Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more.
- Suleyman adds that "we do not want to have to contend with a super-intelligence that has ideas about its own suffering, or ideas about its own feeling."
Claude's constitution directly references Anthropic's uncertainty about whether the AI model has well-being and if it experiences things like "satisfaction" or "discomfort."
- This has led Claude to internalize these "ideas about itself and its own training," Suleyman says.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has alluded to Claude's potential consciousness in the past, saying during an interview with Interesting Times that "we don't know if the models are conscious" but that the company is "open" to that idea.
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"This is exactly what we don't want from AIs." Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleyman criticized Anthropic during an interview with Decoder, saying it's "really, really dangerous" for the company to speculate about Claude's consciousness. Tech AI News Microsoft AI head calls out Anthropic for acting like Claude is conscious Mustafa Suleyman calls Anthropic's speculation 'really, really dangerous.'
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it's "really, really dangerous" for Anthropic to speculate about Claude's consciousness inside its "constitution," or the instructions that tell the model how to behave. Suleyman adds that "we do not want to have to contend with a super-intelligence that has ideas about its own suffering, or ideas about its own feeling." Claude's constitution directly references Anthropic's uncertainty about whether the AI model has well-being and if it experiences things like "satisfaction" or "discomfort."
Anthropic also says the company will "interview" AI models when they're deprecated and will document any "preferences" they have about future releases. While on Decoder , Suleyman calls this a "philosophical failing," as Anthropic made Claude's constitution "a place for speculation like you would in an academic paper rather than a training manual." This has led Claude to internalize these "ideas about itself and its own training," Suleyman says.
For more details please read the original article at The Verge AI.
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