AIAnthropic’s plea for US to grow its AI edge over China is ‘irresponsible’: analysts
American firm’s warning about China’s tech capability seen by some as fearmongering as hopes of bilateral cooperation on AI safety rise
Anthropic has urged the US to widen its edge over China in artificial intelligence capability to “avoid authoritarian AI leadership”, a warning which is being criticised by some industry experts as “irresponsible” and self-serving.
Anthropic said that locking in a 12-to-24-month lead in frontier capabilities by 2028 would be “enormously advantageous”. This gap would allow the US to increase its engagement with AI experts in China in areas such as AI safety and governance, according to Anthropic.
The prospect of the Communist Party leading in frontier AI is “among the greatest threats” to the future of humanity, “enabling repression at a scale that humans alone could not achieve”, Anthropic wrote.
Anthropic, developer of the cutting-edge Claude models, is known to be a vocal critic of China’s AI advancement and a strong advocate for US chip export control measures.
While the company’s latest remarks raise legitimate concerns about misuse that merits serious engagement, its “arms-race framing pushes us in the wrong direction at exactly the wrong moment”, said Alvin Wang Graylin, Digital Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence and senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.