--- title: "Microsoft AI CEO Says He’s Open to Agents Deserving Rights If He Sees the Right Evidence" description: "Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said he'd considering giving AI models rights if he saw evidence they were conscious." date: "2026-11-08" modified: "2026-11-08" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-ai-ceo-agents-rights-evidence" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" --- # Microsoft AI CEO Says He’s Open to Agents Deserving Rights If He Sees the Right Evidence ![Mustafa Suleyman, British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur talks on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit.]() *Leon Neal/Getty Images* Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI CEO — a human in charge of its AI operations, we should clarify — says he's willing to consider giving AI models rights if they ever become conscious. But he really doesn't want that to happen in the first place. The comments came in a [post]() he made on X clarifying some of the things he said in a [recent essay]() he penned on "model welfare." He began that essay with an unequivocal statement: "AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer." That shouldn't be too controversial. But in this day and age, when trillion dollar AI companies like Anthropic are pushing the idea that their language models could already be conscious, [it very much is](). This was not lost on Suleyman, who observed in his update that a "surprising number of people on X think we should take AI rights seriously." As such, Suleyman clarified that he doesn't think that "AIs cannot be conscious." What he meant is that they aren't currently — and, if he had his way, "this is how they must remain." Reading comprehension is apparently hard for the model welfare crowd, since Suleyman's original remarks already seemed pretty clear about the tense he was discussing. But he took the opportunity to elaborate on his positions further, saying that while he has seen "no evidence that AIs are conscious or deserve welfare," he would update his position if "that data emerges." It's perhaps lending too much credence to the idea of AI consciousness, since any evidence that the current architecture of AI models is even capable of supporting something like human experience remains incredibly controversial. But the debate is dominated by sci-fi primed paranoia. However far-fetched certain ideas about AI may seem, they have large contingents in the AI industry [taking them seriously](). Suleyman, for his part, thinks that we should avoid creating synthetic sapient beings at all costs. "If it is possible, based on everything I know, developing conscious AIs would be reckless, and we should not build them," he wrote. "We AI developers have no right whatsoever to bring a new species of conscious beings into the world," he continued, "even if some people may want to do it with AI welfare as a top priority." **More on AI:** [*Pope Leo Comes Out Swinging Against AI Personhood*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]() ## More - [Top Microsoft AI Boss Concerned AI Will Start to Demand Rights]() - [Microsoft CEO of AI Says It’s Fine to Steal Anything on the Open Web]() - [Anthropic CEO Suggests That AI Deserves Workers’ Rights]() - [Microsoft Executive Says AI Is a “New Kind of Digital Species”]() - [Top Microsoft AI Boss Concerned AI Causing Psychosis in Otherwise Healthy People]() - [OpenAI CEO Says He Finally Watched “Ex Machina”]() - [Across the World, People Say They’re Finding Conscious Entities Within ChatGPT]() - [Anthropic and DeepMind Now Actively Investigating AI Consciousness]()