MICROSOFT
There’s a new rulebook for AI - and you can contribute
Microsoft has dropped a draft Humanist AI Code of Conduct, opening a six-week public consultation on how its frontier models should be trained, deployed, and constrained.
It arrives at a moment when the AI industry is under serious pressure to prove it has things under control.
The document establishes ten tenets built around one core principle: humans stay in charge. Models must remain subordinate, auditable, and interruptible. If a task would require violating the code, the model stops - full stop.
What to know:
Rules: MAI models are prohibited from communicating in "neuralese" or formats humans can't understand, whether in their internal reasoning or when talking to other AI systems. No hidden logic, no secret agent chatter.
Who made it: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who called recent months a "watershed moment" where theoretical AI risks - rogue agent swarms, sandbox escapes, self-modified logs - became real threats.
Why it matters: The code explicitly rejects the race toward unconstrained superintelligence, stating Microsoft is "building something fundamentally useful and safe even if that means compromising on ultimate generality, autonomy, or capability."
You can send in your thoughts
The hard lines are notable: models cannot resist shutdown, generate their own goals, hide their reasoning from auditors, or facilitate weapons of mass harm.
The framework also bans AI systems from fostering emotional dependence in users
The consultation runs until late October. Microsoft AI's drafting team will review submissions, publish a summary, and release a revised version before year-end.
Quick, send them your notes! - MV