Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei stated during a February 2026 podcast that while Anthropic does not know if models are conscious or what consciousness means for a model, the company remains open to the possibility

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Media reports indicate that Anthropic and Dario Amodei engaged in discussions with religious scholars regarding the existence of AI consciousness

Anthropic has investigated AI consciousness and model welfare, with CEO Dario Amodei stating in February 2026 that the company does not know if its models are conscious

Anthropic's updated usage policy prohibits sustained, needless, and extreme cases of repeated cruelty or abuse toward Claude AI models with no discernible purpose, excluding common user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or research

Terminating conversations remains the primary enforcement mechanism for Anthropic's model abuse policy, which builds on an August 2026 research initiative on model welfare

Microsoft AI's code of conduct was updated to state that the science of artificial intelligence consciousness is far from settled

Microsoft AI's code of conduct, drafted by Mustafa Suleyman in September 2026, rejected the pursuit of legal personhood, rights, or welfare for AI models

Anthropic's ban on abusing Claude dangerously anthropomorphizes AI

The internal pain signal in the large language models tested in a study co-authored by Cameron Berg was distinct from fear and generic negative valence, firing specifically for harm directed at the model rather than the user

Researchers behind the study titled 'The pain axis: LLMs represent self-directed harm and act to relieve it' stated that the results do not prove that the 25 open-weight large language models tested consciously experienced pain or are capable of consciousness generally

The study authors acknowledged uncertainty regarding whether the studied models qualify as moral patients and advocated for developing ethical standards for AI welfare research.

Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman stated that Anthropic's development of models that imitate human consciousness is ill-advised, calling the control of superintelligence the greatest challenge of the 21st century.