On September 14, Microsoft AI published a draft Humanist AI Code of Conduct — 37 pages governing the behavior of its MAI models — and opened a six-week public consultation on it. The document is unusually plain-spoken and considerably more consequential than the coverage it received.
Most of the attention went to the provisions that read well in a headline. MAI models will never resist human interruption, override, correction, or shutdown. They will not assist with CBRNE weapons or operational cyberattacks. They will not generate child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, or deceptive impersonation. They will not obfuscate their action traces or make human intervention harder. And Microsoft explicitly rejects “the pursuit of legal personhood, or the idea that models might deserve welfare, or be entitled to rights,” stating that models are not conscious and should avoid imitating consciousness-like states.
Dispatches From The Front 