One of the major concerns with generative AI is its potential ability to become conscious. Pop culture has wildly celebrated the idea of conscious AI taking over the world and posing a threat to human intelligence. Microsoft’s AI Chief, Mustafa Suleyman, however, has a different idea. In a recent public discourse, Suleyman has said that trying to make AI feel consciousness is absurd, as AI can never feel like humans.
Speaking at the AfroTech Conference, Suleyman dismissed the idea of creating sentient machines as a fundamentally misdirected goal. “If you ask the wrong question, you end up with the wrong answer. I think it’s totally the wrong question,” said Suleyman stated, rejecting the idea of conscious AI.
Suleyman, who is also a co-founder of DeepMind and one of the most influential figures in the AI landscape, drew a clear distinction between a machine’s ability to process vast information and mimic human interaction, and the biological reality of genuine feeling. He stated that consciousness and emotions are deeply rooted in biology and unique to living beings – something no algorithm can truly replicate.
AI can’t feel things like humans, biological beings
Suleyman warned developers against projects designed to make AI systems appear to feel or suffer. He argued that such pursuits are an unhelpful distraction from AI’s true purpose – serving human needs.
He went on to elaborate on why a machine’s perception of pain or sadness is fundamentally different from that of a human’s. “Our physical experience of pain is something that makes us very sad and feel terrible, but AI doesn’t feel sad when it experiences ‘pain,’” he explained. “It’s really just creating the perception — the seeming narrative of experience, of itself, and of consciousness — but that’s not what it’s actually experiencing.”
Suleyman says he finds the current trend, among rivals like OpenAI, Meta, and xAI, toward exploring emotionally responsive AI companions as “absurd,” considering how machines lack any form of inner life. “They’re not conscious. So, it would be absurd to pursue research that investigates that question, because they’re not and they can’t be,” he said.
Instead, Suleyman feels that AI should be all about utility. He highlights Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI development, pointing to features like Microsoft Copilot’s “real talk.” He highlighted that the company’s focus is on utility and responsiveness, not mimicry of human aspects.
“Quite simply, we’re creating AIs that are always working in service of humans,” Suleyman said. “It’s on everybody to try and sculpt AI personalities with values that they want to see, they want to use, and interact with.”
