On the day of our interview, Amodei apologizes for being late, explaining that he had to take a call from a “senior government official.” Over the past 18 months he and Jack Clark, another co-founder and Anthropic’s policy chief, have nurtured closer ties with the Executive Branch, lawmakers, and the national-security establishment in Washington, urging the U.S. to stay ahead in AI, especially to counter China. (Several Anthropic staff have security clearances allowing them to access confidential information, according to the company’s head of security and global affairs, who declined to share their names. Clark, who is originally British, recently obtained U.S. citizenship.) During a recent forum at the U.S. Capitol, Clark argued it would be “a chronically stupid thing” for the U.S. to underestimate China on AI, and called for the government to invest in computing infrastructure. “The U.S. needs to stay ahead of its adversaries in this technology,” Amodei says. “But also we need to provide reasonable safeguards.”
Seems unclear if that’s their true beliefs or just the rhetoric they believed would work in DC.
The latter could be perfectly benign—eg you might think that labs need better cyber security to stop eg North Korea getting the weights, but this is also a good idea to stop China getting them, so you focus on the latter when talking to Nat sec people as a form of common ground
Ah, here’s a helpful quote from a TIME article.
Seems unclear if that’s their true beliefs or just the rhetoric they believed would work in DC.
The latter could be perfectly benign—eg you might think that labs need better cyber security to stop eg North Korea getting the weights, but this is also a good idea to stop China getting them, so you focus on the latter when talking to Nat sec people as a form of common ground