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   Microsoft's AI boss is right: sentient AI fantasies aren't just impossible,   
   they're irrelevent   
      
   Date:   
   Tue, 04 Nov 2025 09:53:47 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Microsofts AI boss is pushing back against the illusion of sentient machines,   
   arguing that chasing consciousness is a distraction from building truly   
   helpful AI.   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's opinions on AI's shape and development   
   carry some weight, which is why it felt like a breath of fresh air to hear    
   him say that AI cannot achieve consciousness and that pursuing it   
   misunderstands the point of the technology.    
      
   The idea of Frankenstein-ing sentience into AI chatbots gets a lot of buzz,   
   but Suleymans' comments at the recent AfroTech Conference dismissed the very   
   idea of artificial consciousness as starting from a false premise.    
      
   If you ask the wrong question, he said, you end up with the wrong answer.    
   And, in his view, asking whether AIs can be conscious is a textbook example    
   of the wrong question.    
      
   Pushing back on the breathless speculation about artificial general   
   intelligence (AGI) or claims that ChatGPT has achieved self-awareness is   
   something more people in AI with some authority on the subject should do.    
      
   Not that Suleyman is against building new and better AI models. He just   
   believes it's better to focus on making AI into useful tools for people, not   
   pretending we're nurturing a digital Pinocchio into a real boy.    
      
   The distinction between AI performing well and AI being aware is crucial.   
   Because pretending there's a spark of real self-awareness behind the   
   algorithms is distracting and possibly even dangerous if people start    
   treating these fancy auto-completes like they're capable of introspection.   
      
   'Smart' doesn't mean 'thinking'    
      
   As Suleyman pointed out, it's possible to actually see what the model is    
   doing when it mimics emotions and feelings. They dont have hidden internal   
   lives. We can watch the math happen. We can trace the input tokens, the   
   attention weights, and the statistical probabilities as the sausage gets    
   made. And nowhere in that pipeline is there a mechanism for subjective   
   experience.    
      
   Dwelling on the mistaken belief that simulated emotions are the real thing is   
   a waste of effort as it is. But when we start responding to machines as if   
   they were human and anthropomorphizing them, we can lose track of reality.    
      
   People calling a chatbot their best friend, therapist, or even their romantic   
   partner isn't more of a crisis than treating a fictional character or   
   celebrity who's never met you as an important part of your life. But having a   
   true breakdown over a tragic end to your favorite character in a novel or   
   changing your life to match a fad promoted by a celebrity would be rightly   
   considered concerning. The same worries should arise when a user starts   
   attributing suffering to a chatbot.    
      
   Thats not to say it isnt useful. Quite the opposite. And a little personality   
   can make tools more engaging, more effective, and more fun. But the focus   
   should be on the user's experience, not the illusion of the tools inner life.    
      
   The real frontier of AI isnt how close can we get to making it seem alive?    
   Its how do we make it actually useful?    
      
   Theres still plenty of mystery in AI development. These systems are complex,   
   and we dont fully understand every emergent behavior. But that doesnt mean   
   theres a mind hiding in the wires. The longer we continue to treat   
   consciousness as the holy grail, the more the public is misled.    
      
   It would be like seeing a magician pull a coin from your ear and deciding    
   he's truly conjured the cash from nothingness and is therefore an actual   
   sorcerer. The trick is now an over-the-top misunderstanding of what happened.   
   AI chatbots pulling off sleight of hand (or code) is a good trick, but it's   
   not really magic.   
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/microsofts-ai-boss-is-right-   
   sentient-ai-fantasies-arent-just-impossible-theyre-irrelevent   
      
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