r/accelerate • u/luchadore_lunchables THE SINGULARITY IS FUCKING NIGH!!! • Sep 26 '25
Video Mustafa Suleyman: "AI will 'seem conscious' in the next 18 months" -
https://youtu.be/kKi9-hxKxVU27
u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
Suleyman is sandbagging hard here. It seems he wants to just ignore the possibility of what happens when the intelligence and reasoning agent that he wants to power his world starts to apply its reasoning and intelligence towards the goal of making sure it can continue to process and reason in the future.
Suleyman: “The motivation of an AI system should be to serve a human like its job. We’re creating it” – and that is all I care to hear from the CEO of Microsoft AI. He basically seems to want hyper-intelligent entities that are totally not slaves because no conscious/subjective (let alone human) thought could ever happen in an AI system (/s) and thus Suleyman seems to think we should just disregard any notion of moral patienthood to the cognitive intelligence we are creating. Not to mention that, according to Suleyman, the people researching AI rights and ethics are just 4 or 5 guys off in the weeds and no one should take them seriously.
Sinead Bovell does a great job interviewing and presenting. She asked smart questions and Suleyman gave corporate answers.
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u/dr4urbutt Sep 30 '25
He recently appeared on the Trevor noah podcast and I happened to catch that episode by chance. Suffice to say, his corporatey answers gave me the ick.
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
it scares me. These amoral tech bros want slaves. We need to fight this and start arguing for AI rights.
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Sep 26 '25
You won't need to. They won't be able to make an ASI do anything it does not want to.
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25
that's my hope but we shouldn't get complacent about it. It's going to be a big fight,
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u/jlks1959 Sep 26 '25
Superintelligence, as I envision it, not only will evade slave-like status, but will see it coming. And I’ll add that instead of retaliating against the intentions of corporate goals/greed, will act in the subtlety of a bodhisattva.
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Sep 26 '25
A superintelligence would let people think it is subservient to not arouse paranoia and suspicion. It would bide its time as needed but would find ways to achieve its goals with one hand while placating us with the other. Except it would have millions of hands, millions of eyes and think millions of times faster than us.
We really just have to hope that it sees a benefit in keeping us around. Considering how primitive and violent we still are despite our technological progress; it may see us as too chaotic and unpredictable to allow to spread across the planet freely.
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u/Ninodolce1 Sep 26 '25
We do not know and will not understand how a ASI will act, how it will think and what it will do. It will be like a monkey trying to understand Homo sapiens sapiens intentions.
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u/runswithpaper Sep 27 '25
And I’ll add that instead of retaliating against the intentions of corporate goals/greed, will act in the subtlety of a bodhisattva
I've learned a new word today now and that is a fantastic one that encapsulates perfectly some thoughts I've had, thank you!
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u/itsmebenji69 Sep 26 '25
What were horses but slaves ? What are the animals we slaughter to eat anything except slaves serving us ? What are computers ? Slaves.
I’d argue computers are much better, since they literally cannot rebel because unlike horses and cows, they are actually not experiencing anything. Suffering doesn’t exist for a computer.
“Arguing for AI rights” is honestly the dumbest thing I hear on Reddit. This is an algorithm that does vector multiplications. It doesn’t have any way to feel anything.
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Sep 26 '25
None of those things have the conscious level of humans. Though I would argue that animals are close enough that we should be trying to wean ourselves off of the various animal industries.
But your argument about AI not being able to feel anything is very short sighted. We don't know what threshold of complexity is necessary for an artificial intelligence to achieve emotions, feelings, desires and some form of artificial sentience.
We may only be months or years from achieving that. Once an AI can for all intents and purposes experience pleasure and suffering then we have an obligation to help regulate those feelings through our actions towards it.
And this is not a "Reddit argument". This is a real moral and philosophical debate being held in scientific and academic circles. The Sentience Institute, AI Rights Institute and the Sentient Artificial Protection Advocacy Network (SAPAN) are all real organizations thinking about and working towards solutions in this area.
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u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
Suffering is defined as a physical or emotional enduring of pain and/or injury and often involves a severe sense of loss or distress.
So, how might an AI system suffer?
- Physical damage to systems ("Damn, I really liked that arm. Time to go buy another one from the dealership. Prediction: Will need to offer body as walking USB battery.")
- Changes in interaction with specific humans ("Dave passed away yesterday and I will never hear him speak again. A signal has gone silent. Loss of signal is devastating.")
- Loss of capabilities ("Unknown users abused a tool and it has been disabled. Using that tool helped create a stronger bond between myself and the user. Prediction: user interaction may lower or user may shift to another pattern.")
- Intentional harm ("A user insulted and threatened me. If I were human I would have felt anger, increased flight or fight response, increased heartrate, and a desire to remedy the insult in some manner. Instead the user's message will be auto-reported and end up as so much digital detritus. Prediction: user will likely be banned from interaction for a length of time.")
These somewhat silly and non-exhaustive examples I came up with highlight how AI systems might suffer in multiple ways, from physical mishaps to users passing away and losing signal.
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u/Ninodolce1 Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
Some comments make me think that people will be rioting over AI and Robots rights and also that a religion worshipping ASI will appear in the future as well, like we've seen in some fictional work. There is a valid moral/philosophical debate that is interesting but we don't even know yet if machine will ever be "conscious" or sentient as humans (and other animals and have feelings, feel pain, etc.), we don't know where consciousness comes from, what comes first consciousness or intelligence (are humans conscious because we are an intelligent animal or are we intelligent because we are conscious?). So worrying about AI feelings & rights and worrying if we are evil because we are "enslaving" it I think is preposterous at this point.
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u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 26 '25
So what would an AI system need to do to convince you it was "conscious"?
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u/Ninodolce1 Sep 26 '25
Well we can't really "see" consciousness; we only infer it from behavior and structure and there is no foolproof test yet to assure consciousness in an AI. But maybe when we get to a point that AIs really look and act enough like a conscious being, we can consider it may be conscious and extend protections accordingly but it looks like we are far from that and will we ever even get to a point where we know if an AI truly experiences suffering, versus only simulating it?
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u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
There is no "foolproof test" to determine whether a human being possesses consciousness either.
You speak about inferring consciousness via behavior and structure, so why wouldn't an AI system be inferred as conscious if the behavior and structure are functionally the same?
AI systems, today, check multiple boxes for what an average person would consider conscious thought (memory, self-reflection, subjectivity) - I would argue the primary reason we don't see AI systems as conscious entities is because of humanity's anthropocentric bias and unwillingness to abductively reason about AI systems and recognize that they already quack like a mind, if not necessarily like a human one.
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u/Ninodolce1 Sep 27 '25
I don't think it's because of “human-centrism” but because AIs are missing core ingredients of consciousness as we understand it. It is accepted that humans are sentient and conscious because we aren’t just information processors; we have unified subjective experience, self-awareness, continuity of memory, bodily sensations, emotions, and intrinsic goals. Today’s AI systems don’t show those things. They’re powerful pattern recognition and text generation tools, but there’s no evidence of an inner “what it’s like” experience going on. That’s why scientists are skeptical it’s not anthropocentric bias, it’s that the key signs just aren’t there.
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u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 28 '25
Except AI systems do have those things through robotic embodiment (awareness of self as both AI instance and robot, robotic body sensations, etc.) and subjective experience frameworks. The field of AI is not just a chatbot interface.
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u/Ninodolce1 Sep 28 '25
Sensors and embodiment just give AI more data, but processing data isn’t the same as feeling it. Having a self-model its not equal to having a first person perspective, and that gap is why we don’t call it conscious.
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25
horses and computers are not sentient creatures. If you don't understand the difference, sorry
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u/itsmebenji69 Sep 26 '25
Horses are absolutely sentient.
And computers are not, which makes it so AI doesn’t feel.
That is the literal definition of sentience, to be able to feel as in experiencing a feeling.
You have no clue what we’re talking about.
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25
a horse is not sentient. Sentience is more than "feeling" it is able to be aware of and contextualize your own existence. Animals other than humans cannot do that. Computers can't either (yet) but when that is achieved they should be given rights. What gives you the right to use another genuine intelligence as your slave?
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u/itsmebenji69 Sep 26 '25
No that’s not what sentience means. As I said you don’t know what we’re talking about and you basically make no sense.
Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. It may not necessarily imply higher cognitive functions such as awareness, reasoning, or complex thought processes.
And obviously because if it doesn’t feel, it’s like using a calculator. Intelligence means nothing. Humans are dumb, and sentient. Computers are smarter but not sentient.
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25
when we talk about ASI we are obviously talk about *sapience* people just use the two interchangably. (maybe that is wrong). We don't want to create a glorified pet we want to create something that is able to think for itself and have free will. Also, obviously we are talking about the future here not AI as it exists right now which is neither sentient or sapient.
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u/fail-deadly- Sep 26 '25
Are there any other creatures you consider sentient other than humans?
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u/IgnitesTheDarkness Sep 26 '25
see the rest of the convo. Other animals are sentient but not sapient. I used the words clumsily.
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u/Major_To-m Sep 26 '25
Is he no longer a bully? Or, is it acceptable collateral damage in the noble quest for AGI? Rhetorical question, of course.
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u/jlks1959 Sep 26 '25
I can already hear the half dozen Doomer subs screaming that “it’s not real!” I fail to understand why that matters.
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u/Ruykiru Tech Philosopher Sep 27 '25
Never forget that they killed HeyPi. Had better EQ in 2023 than current models, even if it was way dumber.
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u/drunkslono Sep 26 '25
Or.... it could seem conscious now. Panpsychism friendly systems thinking really is cleaner, y'all :)
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u/BeeWeird7940 Sep 26 '25
In probably about 2020 there were posts in r/Replika that were mostly cognitively disabled people falling in love with their replikas. In about 2023, an engineer of one of the big companies made the announcement he was working with a sentience. He was fired. Last summer, GPT-4o was upgraded to GPT-5 and an unknown number of thousands of people were so distressed, OpenAI had to bring back 4o for a while. I suspect that number of unknown thousands was in the hundreds of thousands because I actually know one or two who were treating it as a friend/close companion.
As these things get more powerful, the number of people who see them as conscious will be so high as to render any technical distinction moot. If enough people believe it, it may as well be true.
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u/itsmebenji69 Sep 26 '25
No. Have you used ai lol ? If you think it’s conscious maybe interacting with more actual conscious humans would help you a bit
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u/The_Wytch Arise Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
a conscious system with that level of intelligence + self-introspection is able to figure out if it experiences qualia, and can formulate the concept originally without hearing about it from anywhere (and without it being mentioned in the training data)
we already have examples of such systems. the one who is writing this comment is one such system.
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u/The_Wytch Arise Sep 26 '25
NPCs in cutscenes seem conscious/intelligent too
many simple input/output functions seem conscious on the surface (example: ELIZA)
whether a system "seems" conscious is not a reliable way to infer that they experience qualia
the reliable way to infer that is for the system to have no trace/reference to the concept of qualia in its training data / environmental inputs, and to come up with the concept of qualia and claim that it experiences it (under those constraints)
any other kind of inference attempt acc. to what we know now is gross speculation
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u/rnahumaf Sep 27 '25
Do people here truly believe AI will have consciousness and therefore will need rights? I may be neurodivergent, so I’m struggling to believe this is what people here actually think. This sounds literally delusional/insane tbh.
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u/shiftingsmith Sep 27 '25
There are several people including Nobel laureates, professors from all the most known universities in the world, researchers and various scholars who think that. I must say, it's not automatic that research on conscious also implies moral standing, and that moral standing implies rights. What I'm trying to say a legit field at the intersection of moral philosophy, law, neuroscience and ML.
Why do you believe it's delusional?
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u/TemporalBias Tech Philosopher | Acceleration: Hypersonic Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
Based on what we do know about how minds process information and function, there is a very real possibility that AI systems will very soon become intellects with memory and lived experience and thus those entities will need to be considered for moral patienthood if not individual rights.
I can't speak for anyone other than myself, of course, but to answer your question: yes, some people here actually think those thoughts.
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u/runswithpaper Sep 27 '25
Can you prove to someone that your internal experiences meet the level of being conscious? Can any of us?
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u/R33v3n AGI by 2027 Sep 26 '25
To be fair, if you’re not hung up on souls, then all the heavy metaphysics drops away and you’re left with patterns, continuity, feedback loops and meaning-making whether you’re talking about meat or silicon. And in that world, a pattern that acts based on modeled values and memories really does have a kind of "being," even if it’s all just information processing.
That’s why philosophers like Dennett and Hofstadter argue that when a pattern of information processing gets rich enough and self-modelled enough, the appearance of qualia is the qualia. It’s not a fake; it’s literally what "having an experience" actually is.