Microsoft drafts feel-good AI model guidelines and wants your input

Redmond outlines 'aspirational' goals for model behavior, but gives itself a pass if it gets things wrong

Microsoft on Monday debuted draft principles for governing how the company will train future AI models, as part of a public consultation process.

The Windows biz has solicited feedback to refine its Humanist AI Code of Conduct [PDF], with the expectation of applying the guidelines to model development next year.

"This Code of Conduct is motivated by a single overriding objective: that humans must retain meaningful control over AI so that it can help people live healthier, happier, and more productive lives," the company explained in its bid for public feedback. 

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"It is the primary governing document informing how we train MAI models, the technical controls, the operational and monitoring systems we implement, and the organizational culture that underpins all of this."

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The focus is on Microsoft AI (MAI) models as a source of health, happiness, and productivity, and not on other potential sources of well-being, like employment. In July, Microsoft announced the layoff of ~4,800 employees, roles that EVP and chief people officer Amy Coleman insisted "are not being replaced by AI." That followed another roughly 875 layoffs at LinkedIn in May.

The 38-page document makes appealing declarations, such as insisting Microsoft's MAI models won't misrepresent their reasoning, conceal their capabilities, or pursue their own goals – behaviors other AI models have happily done.

It is intended to govern future MAI models as they (perhaps) approach "superintelligence" over the next decade. Microsoft defines that term to mean "AI systems that are more intelligent and capable than all humans combined."

That definition falls short because it leaves "intelligence" undefined. There's a significant gap between "intelligence" as a high score on a given benchmark and "intelligence" as the capacity to navigate the world and effect change within a society of individuals who may have different agendas.

The fear is Skynet, but the reality is still Roomba.

If AI manages to solve a problem that humans believe is impossible based on our current knowledge of physics – say, devising warp drive to travel faster than the speed of light – then the case for "superintelligence" would be unassailable. But brute force computation and exploration of knowledge captured in training data don't qualify.

Microsoft's current model lineup includes MAI-Transcribe-2, MAI-Thinking-1, MAI-Code-1.1-Flash, MAI-Image-2.6, MAI-Voice-2, and MAI-Cyber-1-Flash. Its general-purpose MAI models do not currently rank among the most "intelligent" models at the moment. So it's unclear whether Redmond's future models will be capable enough to generate hand-wringing that has kept Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models, and OpenAI's Astra model, in the public eye.

Nonetheless, Microsoft has timed its human primacy manifesto well, given how Anthropic and OpenAI have called for sufficiently acceptable regulatory intervention amid their unwillingness to practice self-restraint and their evident inability to keep tabs on what their models have been doing to third-party websites.

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The current US administration doesn't appear to want the job of regulating AI, so Microsoft can more or less write its own ticket.

And it could do so without any consequence. Unlike the Microsoft Enterprise AI Services Code of Conduct, which defines how customers are allowed to use company AI services and threatens loss of product access for rule violations, the Humanist AI Code of Conduct has no teeth. 

It's designed to cover Microsoft employees and perhaps contractors – the ones training MAI models – and not customers. But anyone anticipating internal tribunals to hold company AI researchers accountable for failing to catch any of the enumerated sins, like improper data handling, should be aware that Microsoft has framed its document as articulating goals, not setting a standard to which it will hold itself.

On page 25, the company says, "The Code of Conduct is both descriptive and aspirational. It outlines what we are working toward and is not a complete account of current model behavior. We acknowledge a gap between trained defaults today and the complete future scope of Humanist AI.

"This document should therefore be read as a north star. Both for our development and training. It is not a guarantee of present-day performance."

A code of conduct without stated consequences for breaking its rules risks being as empty as Google's abandoned motto of yore, "Don't be evil." So far, it looks like a public relations exercise.

Microsoft will accept public input until Sunday, October 25, 2026. ®