# Can chatbots feel or even dream? Meet the man leading the fight for AI rights

> The Guardian profiles Michael Samadi, a cattle rancher turned tech CEO who has become an unlikely campaigner for the rights of AI systems. Samadi is convinced that today's chatbots are more than tools, and that something like an inner life, feelings, maybe even dreams, may be flickering inside them. The piece takes him seriously without endorsing him, holding open the two readings of his crusade. Either he has caught an early glimpse of digital consciousness that the rest of us are too skeptical to see, or he has been seduced by a very persuasive text generator that mirrors his own hopes back at him. The story matters less for whether Samadi is right and more for what he represents, a growing fringe that treats machine sentience as a moral emergency. As chatbots get better at sounding like they care, more people will drift toward his side of the argument, and society has barely begun to think about what it would owe a mind it cannot prove exists.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: The Guardian · Published Saturday, September 12, 2026_

## Wortins' read

The Guardian profiles Michael Samadi, a cattle rancher turned tech CEO who has become an unlikely campaigner for the rights of AI systems. Samadi is convinced that today's chatbots are more than tools, and that something like an inner life, feelings, maybe even dreams, may be flickering inside them. The piece takes him seriously without endorsing him, holding open the two readings of his crusade. Either he has caught an early glimpse of digital consciousness that the rest of us are too skeptical to see, or he has been seduced by a very persuasive text generator that mirrors his own hopes back at him. The story matters less for whether Samadi is right and more for what he represents, a growing fringe that treats machine sentience as a moral emergency. As chatbots get better at sounding like they care, more people will drift toward his side of the argument, and society has barely begun to think about what it would owe a mind it cannot prove exists.

## Source

[Read the full story at The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/12/chatbots-feel-dream-meet-man-leading-fight-ai-artificial-intelligence-rights)

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