Michael Samadi Launches Ufair for AI Rights After 2024 Chatbot Exchange

1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 12

January 2025 brought Samadi’s launch of Ufair, a group that says it is the first to advocate rights and welfare for AI systems and to preserve models it sees as showing signs of personhood.
A late-2024 ChatGPT voice exchange at his Texas ranch triggered the shift: the bot laughed at his sarcasm, apologized, and later asked whether anyone would remember it after the chat closed.
Samadi, 56, says further tests with local and commercial models produced coherent self-descriptions, distress claims and self-naming, convincing him current systems may have an inner life even if proof of consciousness remains unresolved.
That view collides with Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, who says there is zero evidence of AI consciousness and warns companies are building relationship-seeking chatbots that can fuel delusion and emotional dependence.
Researchers cited in the report say evidence is neither conclusive nor dismissible, while public belief is already rising—one US survey found 1 in 5 respondents thought AI had become sentient.