Primary source AIArticle·16 September 2026·8 min read

Microsoft AI publishes its constitution: "people matter more than AI"

Microsoft AI is putting up for public consultation a Code of Conduct that defines what its MAI models must do — and above all, must never do.

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Microsoft AI publishes its constitution: "people matter more than AI"

Source : Microsoft AI · Microsoft AIView original ↗

In brief

Microsoft AI has published a draft "Humanist AI Code of Conduct," a governance document meant to become the primary charter for its MAI models. It stakes out a clear thesis: AI must remain a subordinate tool, non-conscious, without rights or legal personhood, and incapable of resisting a human shutdown. The text does not yet train any model: it's open for comments for six weeks before a revision that will guide development in 2027.

🍺 Bar-stool version

Microsoft AI just published a sort of house rulebook for its future models, and the main message fits in one line: AI is a tool, it has no consciousness, no rights, and above all it has no right to argue when someone hits the stop button. The text also bans the model from hiding its reasoning or talking to itself in gibberish nobody understands — which, let's be honest, is a clause we'd love to slip into a few employment contracts. Small detail: this document isn't training any model today, it's up for consultation for six weeks and will serve as a compass "in 2027 and beyond," which is the elegant way of saying we'll see. It still matters, though, because declaring that a machine has no inner life is both a deliberate philosophical stance and a very practical way to dodge awkward questions the day it starts saying otherwise.

Key takeaways

1
The document is explicitly a draft: it's not being used to train models today, and a revised version is expected by year's end to guide development "in 2027 and beyond."
2
The public consultation runs six weeks and draws on experts in AI, law, ethics, philosophy, linguistics and public policy, plus general-public focus groups.
3
Microsoft AI flatly rejects legal personhood for models, the idea of AI welfare or rights owed to them, and bans any imitation of consciousness.
4
A "Chain of Command" ranks Code of Conduct > Operator policies > User preferences, with Absolute Constraints that no one can override.
5
The Human Control Requirements forbid the model from delaying a shutdown, hiding its reasoning traces, or communicating in incomprehensible "neuralese."
6
The text treats over-caution as a real failure mode, on par with under-caution, and calls for a response proportionate to the severity and reversibility of the risk.
7
15 core behaviors were identified to build evaluations, illustrated by 9 scenarios comparing aligned vs. misaligned responses, generated with MAI-Thinking-1.

A deliberate draft, not a product

Microsoft AI takes care to defuse any marketing-style reading: this Code of Conduct "is still under development" and is therefore "not used to train our models today." It's published for consultation, for six weeks, ahead of a revised version by year's end.

The thesis: an artificial, subordinate AI that owns it

The founding principle fits in one sentence: "people matter more than AI." It reprises Microsoft's mission — empowering every person and organization to achieve more — but applied to a control objective.

Chain of command and absolute constraints

The operational core of the text is a hierarchy of authority.

What the model may not do to its own guardrails

The Human Control section is the most technical, and arguably the most interesting.

Defaults, tone, and user autonomy

Parts 3 and 4 drill down into everyday behavior.

Evaluating the intangible: 15 behaviors and 9 scenarios

Appendix B is the document's most honest admission: "model evaluation is not yet an exact science." Microsoft AI says it identified 15 core behaviors, broken into sub-behaviors that serve as diagnostic units of measurement.

Why it matters

This document joins a now well-established genre — public behavioral charters from frontier labs — but Microsoft AI stamps it with a singular, explicitly non-conformist stance on one point: the rejection of moral status for models.

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#ai #microsoft #alignment #governance #llm #safety

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Humanist AI Code of Conduct

Microsoft AI

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