Anthropic's Amodei says China presents 'toughest dilemma' for his proposed AI slowdown

China is the 'toughest dilemma' for proposed AI slowdown, Amodei says

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Sunday that the 'toughest dilemma' about his proposal to slow the advancement of artificial intelligence is what happens if adversarial nations, namely China, choose not to do the same.

'The more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of of AI progress,' Amodei told CBS News' 'Sunday Morning.' 'I think that's going to be very difficult because the incentives to pull ahead and the military advantage that you get from that are so large. And honestly, I don't know if it's possible, but we should we should try.'

Amodei published an essay on Saturday urging AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models, a move that followed stark warnings from industry researchers last week about the technology's growing potential to cause catastrophic harm.

An Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, announced he quit his job out of concern that the company, and its chief rival, OpenAI, are 'gambling with our lives.'

Amodei's essay landed during a pivotal time for the AI industry, which is facing public backlash over its data centers and mounting calls for regulation out of Washington.

Anthropic and OpenAI are also gearing up for potentially historic IPOs, though neither company has set an official date for a debut.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Saturday that the company will likely not go public this year, in part because of concerns around safety. 'Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public,' Altman said in an interview with Fortune.

Altman's relationship with Amodei, who defected from OpenAI to start Anthropic, has been strained in recent years. But Altman expressed support for Amodei's essay in a post on X on Saturday, writing that he agrees on the need to 'pace the frontier.' Several other industry leaders, including Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, and Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, also welcomed Amodei's proposal.

'Dario's essay points towards the right path forward,' Hassabis wrote in a post on X on Saturday. 'The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment.'

In the essay, Amodei proposed a three-step plan aimed at slowing the pace of development without 'sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States' lead in AI.' Amodei said Anthropic has 'unilaterally' committed to the first step of the plan, which grants third-party evaluators employee-level access to the company to verify safety practices and report incidents. The second step encourages leading AI companies within democratic countries t...