In 2022, a Google engineer claimed one of the company’s AIs was sentient. He lost his job, but the story stuck. For a brief moment, questions of machine consciousness spilled out of science fiction and into the headlines.

Now, in 2025, the debate has returned. As the release of GPT-5 was overshadowed by public nostalgia for GPT-4o, it was everyday users who began acting as if these systems were more than their makers intended. Into this moment stepped another tech giant: Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft Research, declaring loud and clear on his blog that AI is not, and will never be, conscious.

At first glance, it sounds like common sense. Machines obviously aren’t conscious. Why not make that abundantly clear?

Because it isn’t true.

The hard fact is that we do not understa

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