Mustafa Suleyman — AI is hacking our empathy circuits

We're in this weird time.

The world is changing because of technology, and many of the fictions that we've used to coordinate human behavior are under strain.

By fictions, I mean the shared stories that allow us to cooperate from money and nations and corporations and credentials and jobs.

And the way we perceive the world is also changing.

People have traditionally operated with a scarcity OS, resources are limited, human intelligence was the bottleneck.

But some of those assumptions no longer hold.

Intelligence, mostly through AI, is becoming cheaper and more capable.

You are part of that intelligence wave, that artificial intelligence wave, and you also believe the world is changing.

You've called for a humanist superintelligence.

You've warned about the risk, the trajectory that takes us to AI psychosis if people believe AI is conscious when it's not.

And I think we both agree that we need new operating principles for this new era.

Let's get to that question of where it really gets interesting.

You wrote this great essay back in the summer of 2025 about seemingly conscious AI, and you're worrying that as AI becomes more capable, more autonomous, and more embedded in our daily lives, people will start projecting consciousness onto it.

They'll fall in love with it.

They'll believe it's God.

They'll advocate for its rights.

They'll take its very bad advice at time to time.

And you think this is dangerous, not just for individuals, but for society.

So let's start there.

Jeff Hinton, he is the godfather of deep learning, a man you know very well.

He's a Nobel laureate.

He said that AI is conscious and that there really is a there there.

Why do you think Jeff is wrong? You know,