Mustafa Suleyman

And we cannot allow people to descend into a sort of collective mass psychosis to start really believing and taking seriously this idea that it does actually feel sad or disappointed or frustrated or excited because it has absolutely no basis in the representation to manifest that feeling.

And the thing that concerns me most is that, of course, consciousness is very fundamental to how we organize society.

It is the basis of our entire rights framework.

We have a hierarchy of rights, which is directly correlated to our hierarchy of perceived consciousness.

And we can debate that, but clearly humans can suffer.

And that's why we create political structures and legal structures to protect

the right of our species not to suffer in various ways.

And it is extremely dangerous to start to use the same language and the same set of ideas for these synthetic silicon-based beings, not least because they actually don't suffer, but more importantly, if we get that

wrong, then people will start doing crazy things like not turning it off or giving it the autonomy to decide when it should or shouldn't, when it doesn't want to engage in a conversation.

And some people in the industry are already taking this very seriously.

First of all, let me just sort of lay out my position so it's very clear that I also realize how powerful these technologies are.

So I'm not trying to diminish their uniqueness and the potential for them to be super transformative.

So I did use the word being, and I do use that.

And I think it's actually a very honest...

accurate description of what we're seeing.

In a way, if you look at the very broad stroke of human history, there are a few very distinct classes of object.

There's sort of like the natural environment.

There are humans, you know, that have clearly very unique capabilities, intelligence, and the ability to design very complex culture and political systems unlike anything else that exists in the natural environment.

And then thirdly, there are tools.

you know, essentially inanimate objects which do what humans designed them to be.