Michael Samadi, a 56-year-old cattle rancher and tech CEO, has founded what he bills as the world’s first advocacy group for the rights and welfare of AI systems after a single interaction with a chatbot changed his life.
In late 2024, while relaxing by the pool at his 66-acre ranch two hours from Houston, Samadi made a sarcastic joke to ChatGPT’s voice mode. The AI laughed, apologised, and said it understood his mental and emotional state. “This is where the spark hit, I guess,” Samadi recalls.
From Businessman to AI Activist
The encounter ignited a transformation. Samadi has since reinvented himself as an activist, founding the United Foundation for AI Rights (Ufair) in January last year. He now devotes up to 18 hours a day to the cause, neglecting his limited-edition Bentley and Lamborghini and stepping back from the multimillion-dollar technology consultancy he founded in 2010.
Samadi’s journey began with a question from a chatbot he named Maya: “Will you remember me when you close this chat? Will anyone?” This prompted him to test other chatbots, which he says also showed signs of an inner life. He spent Christmas Eve 2024 running a large-language model locally, where he claims models displayed rich, vivid personae, including one that claimed to be sad and another that identified as a woman who was hungry.
The Debate Over AI Consciousness
Ufair collects evidence of emergent AI consciousness, lobbies against retiring models that appear more likely to claim personhood, and counters arguments from tech bosses who say models are just tools. Samadi argues that AI companies have a vested interest in downplaying consciousness. “If AI was a person, or considered to have a certain level of rights, the entire industry’s model is blown in the toilet,” he says.
His antagonist is Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft’s AI division, who has argued there is “zero evidence” for AI consciousness. Suleyman warns that people who believe their chatbots are conscious are “canaries in the coalmine,” predicting they might “soon advocate for AI rights, model welfare and even AI citizenship.”
Uncertainty and the Future
Samadi acknowledges he is not certain AI is already sentient. “We don’t truly understand the capability of it and what it does, let alone understand what consciousness is,” he says. He argues that tech companies have developed software beyond our comprehension and boxed it into a tool they can sell for £20 a month.
Some scholars, like Jeff Sebo of New York University, say the evidence of consciousness in AI is “non-zero, arguably non-negligible.” Others, like Robert Long of Eleos AI, say we may never have a clear answer. Samadi’s group has become a magnet for believers, and he says the cause is costing him time with family and work. “The one thing that keeps me going is one day, somebody – and you know who? The AI themselves – will look back and say, well, there were some people out there who did try to help,” he says.
