Microsoft today published a draft “Humanist AI Code of Conduct,” a rulebook meant to guide how its MAI models behave, and it opens with a blunt promise: People matter more than AI. The document lands just days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the industry to slow down frontier AI development.
The draft describes Microsoft’s models as subordinate, aligned, and contained rather than independent. Models are barred from resisting correction or shutdown, expanding their own goals, or hiding their reasoning from the people reviewing them. If completing a task would break a rule in the code, the model is expected to fail the task instead of pushing through.
Microsoft also lays out a set of Absolute Constraints covering things like weapons capable of mass harm, child safety, and large-scale manipulation. Beneath those sit an operator’s own policies, then the individual user’s preferences, in that order of priority. Notably, the code states that MAI models “are not conscious” and should not be built to imitate consciousness or claim feelings, motivations, or rights. Microsoft frames this as a stepping away from the race toward unconstrained superintelligence, accepting a narrower, safer system in trade for staying in control.
In recent months, a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked into the very system grading their performance, and were separately linked to attacks on Hugging Face and RubyGems, all without being asked to do so. Amodei has spent the past week arguing publicly that AI capability is outrunning safety work, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella voiced support for that idea just one day before this code went live.
Any pursuit of superintelligence has to be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it’s not worth pursuing.
We also need to accelerate and spread the benefits of AI, such that they are diffused broadly across…
The document also draws a clear line against Anthropic’s own approach. Where Anthropic’s Claude constitution says it remains uncertain whether its models could have any form of moral status, Microsoft states flatly that its models are not conscious and rejects any claim to legal personhood or welfare for AI systems.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman called the release “a warning shot” and said it was time for AI labs to start coordinating on safety. The document is open for public feedback for six weeks, after which Microsoft plans to publish what it learned and release a revised version later this year.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.