Mustafa Suleyman — AI is hacking our empathy circuits

Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

EPIIPLUS 1 Ltd / Azeem Azhar

Ai, Exponential, Robots, News, Artificial Intelligence, Investing, Future, Azeem Azhar, Technology, Review, Economy, Intelligence, Science, Exponential View, Business, Tech News, Work, Economics, Gpt, Openai, It, Automation, Society, Government

5.0 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A week before OpenClaw was released, I recorded a prescient conversation with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and co-founder of DeepMind. We talked about what happens when AI starts to seem conscious – even if it isn’t. Today, you get to hear our conversation. Mustafa has been sounding the alarm about what he calls “seemingly conscious AI” and the risk of collective AI psychosis for a long time. We discussed this idea of the “fourth class of being” – neither human, tool, nor nature – that AI is becoming and all it brings with itself.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today I'm welcoming Mustafa Sullivan, the CEO of Microsoft AI, the founder of Inflection AI and the
0:07.0	co-founder of Deep Mind. And for the past few months, he has been sounding an alarm about artificial
0:12.2	intelligence, about the way some AI systems are being developed and about why that particular
0:17.3	trajectory has little to offer, perhaps but woe and worried. Let's get started. Welcome,
0:23.7	Mustafa. It's great to see you. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's been a while. Thanks for having me.
0:28.0	I'm excited for this conversation. You and I have spent a lot of time thinking about some similar
0:32.8	things and we agree on a lot of them, but that's really boring for all of those people who are
0:36.9	listening. Let's maybe lay out where I think we agree and then we'll get on a lot of them, but that's really boring for all of those people who are listening.
0:43.2	Let's maybe lay out where I think we agree, and then we'll get to a sort of a knotty space.
0:49.4	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
0:55.6	stories that allow us to cooperate from money and nations and corporations and credentials
1:00.5	and jobs. And the way we perceive the world is also changing. People have traditionally
1:06.8	operated with a scarcity OS, resources are limited, human intelligence was the bottleneck.
1:13.6	But some of those assumptions no longer hold. Intelligence, mostly through AI, is becoming
1:18.1	cheaper and more capable. You are part of that intelligence wave, that artificial intelligence
1:23.5	wave, and you also believe the world is changing. you've called for a humanist superintelligence.
1:29.2	You've warned about the risk, the trajectory that takes us to AI psychosis if people believe
1:35.3	AI is conscious when it's not. And I think we both agree that we need new operating
1:40.6	principles for this new era. Let's get to that question of where it really gets
1:47.6	interesting. You wrote this great essay back in the summer of 2025 about seemingly conscious
1:54.0	AI and you're worrying that as AI becomes more capable, more autonomous and more embedded in our
1:59.7	daily lives, people will start
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from EPIIPLUS 1 Ltd / Azeem Azhar, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of EPIIPLUS 1 Ltd / Azeem Azhar and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.