Microsoft Claims that "People Matter more than AI"

­Microsoft has become the latest big player to sound the alarm on AI. Its “Humanist AI Code of Conduct,” published on 9/14, asserts that humans come first, AI “should not be designed to imitate consciousness,” and in a glimpse of the future, we should unequivocally reject the notion of legal personhood for AI systems.  

This is no coincidence -- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned about AI’s escalating unpredictable behavior and called for a slowdown, and the industry itself has released a statement to world leaders titled Pacing the Frontier, where the signatories (including OpenAI) warned about a potential singularity.

“There is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems,” claim the signatories.

Pacing the Frontier’s subtext was that no single company will voluntarily give up a competitive advantage by unilaterally slowing down AI production, so we must take action as an industry.

Microsoft’s assertion is simple – in regards to this new “Superintelligence”, humans “must retain meaningful control over AI so that it can help people live healthier, happier, and more productive lives.”

The company claims their proposed moral framework underpins how they train their own AI, and it’s congruent with their legal, policy, and governance frameworks.

And at least at first-glance, that appears to be true, with Microsoft pursuing a human-first policy – while the company laid off 4,800 employees over the summer, mostly in their commercial and Xbox organizations, Microsoft claims it wasn’t the result of AI.

“People matter more than AI,” Microsoft asserts. “Technology’s purpose is to advance human civilization and to accelerate human flourishing. Science and technology have been the engine of human progress for millennia, delivering immense benefits to billions of people. That’s what we intend and expect from AI.”