Mustafa Suleyman says that designing AI systems to exceed human intelligence—and to mimic behavior that suggests consciousness—would be “dangerous and misguided.”

Mustafa Suleyman is not your average big tech executive. He dropped out of Oxford university as an undergrad to create the Muslim Youth Helpline, before teaming up with friends to cofound DeepMind, a company that blazed a trail in building game-playing AI systems before being acquired by Google in 2014.

Suleyman left Google in 2022 to commercialize large language models (LLMs) and build empathetic chatbot assistants with a startup called Inflection. He then joined Microsoft as its first CEO of AI in March 2024 after the software giant invested in his company and hired most of its employees.

Last month, Suleyman published a lengthy blog post in which he argues that many in the AI industry should avoid designing AI systems to mimic consciousness by simulating emotions, desires, and a sense of self. Suleyman’s thoughts on position seem to contrast starkly with those of many in AI, especially those who worry about AI welfare. I reached out to understand why he feels so strongly about the issue.

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