Technology

Story: Microsoft Seeks Public Input on AI Ethics Code as CEO Unveils Draft Regulations

By Dan Saada

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Human Control Takes Center Stage. The Absolute Constraints section goes further than just listing banned uses.

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Three Principles, One Big Caveat. Outside the hard rules, the draft lays out three guiding objectives: Human Flourishing, Plural…

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Suleyman's Move Lands in a Crowded Debate. The timing isn't accidental. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay over the weekend…

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Microsoft put out a draft Code of Conduct for its AI models this week, and CEO Mustafa Suleyman is asking the public to weigh in before late October. Six weeks.

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The document is dense, and some of what's in it is pretty blunt. Microsoft's so-called MAI models — that's the internal branding for its own AI systems — face hard prohibitions…

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The Absolute Constraints section goes further than just listing banned uses. It says MAI models must never resist interruption or shutdown by humans. Full stop.

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And murky is the right word. The draft doesn't yet name an external verification process. It doesn't specify who actually enforces any of this.

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There's also a section that's going to get people talking. Microsoft explicitly rejects the concept of "model welfare.

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It's a reasonable framework on paper. But frameworks live and die on implementation, and right now there's a lot the draft doesn't say. No independent auditor.

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Tech writer Andrea Morris pushed back on the framing around AI subordination, calling it uncomfortably close to the language of enslavement and arguing for a more cooperative…

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Related: Senates CLARITY Act Faces Critical Vote After Intense Bipartisan Negotiations

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Microsoft's draft lands right in the middle of that tension. It's a public document, open for comment, tied to a hard deadline.

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What's clear right now: the consultation runs through late October. Microsoft collects feedback, publishes a summary, and then finalizes. MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI-Code-1.

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