Big Tech clashes on AI consciousness

PLUS: Create and edit Canva designs with ChatGPT agents

AuthorAuthor

Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung
August 20, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Just as AI models are getting eerily good at seeming human, Microsoft's AI chief is pumping the brakes with an urgent warning: stop treating them like they're alive.

Mustafa Suleyman's new essay takes direct aim at "Seemingly Conscious AI" systems, calling research into model welfare "dangerous" — and showing tech's biggest players are deeply divided on one of AI’s toughest philosophical questions.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Microsoft exec warns about 'seemingly conscious' AI

  • Bill Gates backs Alzheimer's AI challenge

  • Create and edit Canva designs with ChatGPT

  • Microsoft Excel gets an AI upgrade

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

P.S. — Want to be featured in our Community Workflow section? Tell us how you are using AI in your work here.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MUSTAFA SULEYMAN

Image source: Mustafa Suleyman

The Rundown: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman published an essay warning about "Seemingly Conscious AI" that can mimic and convince users they’re sentient and deserve protections, saying they pose a risk both to society and AI development.

The details:

  • Suleyman argues SCAI can already be built with current tech, simulating traits like memory, personality, and subjective experiences.

  • He highlighted rising cases of users experiencing “AI psychosis,” saying AI could soon have humans advocating for model welfare and AI rights.

  • Suleyman also called the study of model welfare “both premature and frankly dangerous”, saying the moral considerations will lead to even more delusions.

  • The essay urged companies to avoid marketing AI as conscious and build AI “for people, not to be a person.”

Why it matters: Suleyman is taking a strong stance against AI consciousness, a contrast to Anthropic’s extensive study of model welfare. But we’re in uncharted waters, and with science still uncertain about what consciousness even is, this feels like closing off important questions before we've even properly asked them.

TOGETHER WITH AIRIA

The Rundown: Airia is an enterprise AI platform that enables organizations of all sizes to confidently deploy AI with advanced security control, comprehensive data protection, and automated risk management  — ensuring AI initiatives are both powerful and protected.

With Airia, you'll experience:

  • Built-in AI safeguards for runtime prompts, data leakage, and prompt injections

  • Scalable compliance that maintains regulatory standards (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR)

  • Granular control and visibility for security policies, access control, & more

AI & MEDICAL RESEARCH

Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is funding the Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize, a $1M competition to develop AI agents that can autonomously analyze decades of Alzheimer's research data and accelerate discoveries.

The details:

  • The competition is seeking AI agents that autonomously plan, reason, and act to “accelerate breakthrough discoveries” from decades of global patient data.

  • Gates Ventures is funding the prize through the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative, with the winning tool to be made freely available to scientists.

  • The competition is open to a range of contestants, including both individual AI engineers and big tech labs, with applications opening this week.

Why it matters: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has said he envisions “curing all disease” with AI in the next decade, and Gates is betting that AI agents can help accelerate Alzheimer’s research right now. The free release requirement also ensures that discoveries benefit global research instead of being locked behind corporate walls.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ChatGPT's Canva connector to automatically generate multiple personalized designs by prompting ChatGPT to take over your browser, navigate to Canva, and create custom variations of your templates.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to canva.com/ai and create a template (e.g., "congratulatory letter") or choose an existing design

  2. In ChatGPT, click "+" → Agent Mode and connect your Canva account through Connectors

  3. Prompt: "Find my [template name] in Canva and create 4 versions with custom messages for: Michael (bodybuilding win), Anna (new baby), etc."

  4. ChatGPT duplicates your template and auto-fills personalized text for each recipient

  5. Review in Canva and make quick formatting fixes before downloading

Pro tip: Generate all your text variations in ChatGPT first, then use Canva AI for layouts. Agent Mode handles bulk automation, but expect some manual cleanup — treat it as a drafting assistant rather than a one-click solution.

PRESENTED BY TURING

The Rundown: The world's leading AI labs rely on Turing to win the ASI race through independent, high-quality frontier data and talent. From RL gym environments to multi-modal, audio, and video. Turing powers training workflows without vendor lock-in or compromised neutrality.

Turing delivers:

  • Full-stack AI training support across speech, vision, simulation, and agent workflows

  • 50+ successful frontier projects with real-world evaluation and benchmarking

  • Seamless migration from legacy vendors with full compatibility

MICROSOFT

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Microsoft is testing a new COPILOT function that gives broader AI assistance directly into Excel cells, letting users generate summaries, classify data, and create tables using natural language prompts.

The details:

  • The COPILOT function integrates with existing formulas, with results automatically updating as data changes.

  • COPILOT is powered by OpenAI’s gpt-4.1-mini model, but cannot access external web data or company documents with inputs staying confidential.

  • Microsoft cautioned against using it in high-stakes settings due to potentially inaccurate results, with the feature also currently having limited call capacity.

  • The feature is rolling out to Microsoft 365 Beta Channel users, with a broader release for Frontier program web users dropping soon.

Why it matters: Millions interact with Excel every day, and the program feels like one of the few areas that has yet to see huge mainstream AI infusions that move the needle. It looks like that might be changing, with Microsoft and Google’s Sheets starting to make broader moves to bring spreadsheets into the AI era.

QUICK HITS

  • 🎆 Qwen-Image-Edit - Qwen’s new image editing model

  • 🎹 Eleven Music API - Integrate high-quality music into products & workflows

  • 🧠 M3 Agent - ByteDance Seed’s multimodal agent with long-term memory

  • 🤖 Nemotron Nano 2 - Nvidia’s family of tiny, efficient reasoning models

Google product lead Logan Kilpatrick posted a banana emoji on X, hinting that the ‘nano-banana’ photo editing model being tested on LM Arena is likely from Google.

OpenAI announced the release of ChatGPT Go, a cheaper subscription specifically for India, priced at less than $5 per month and able to be paid in local currency.

ElevenLabs introduced Chat Mode, allowing users to build text-only conversational agents on the platform in addition to voice-first systems.

DeepSeek launched its V3.1 model with a larger context window, while Chinese media pinned delays of the R2 release on CEO Liang Wenfeng’s “perfectionism.”

Eight Sleep announced a new $100M raise, with plans to develop the world’s first “Sleep Agent” for proactive recovery and sleep optimization.

Runway launched a series of updates to its platform, including the addition of third-party models and visual upgrades to its Chat Mode.

LM Arena debuted BiomedArena, a new evaluation track for testing and ranking the performance of LLMs on real-world biomedical research.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Cleo M. in Miami, FL:

"I’m using Fal, Higgsfield, and ChatGPT for my AI Twin on Instagram. I have created an entire brand around her, and I’m selling digital affiliate programs passively, all with AI! I wouldn’t have this income stream without it. It runs itself while I’m at my real 9-5 job at a company that won’t allow the use of AI! How ironic!"

How are you using AI in your work? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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