"I was sitting in a conference room with Sam Bowman, a safety researcher at Anthropic. Worth $183 billion at the latest estimate, the AI firm has every incentive to speed things up, ship more products, and develop more advanced chatbots to stay competitive with the likes of OpenAI, Google, and the industry's other giants. But Anthropic is at odds with itself-thinking deeply, even anxiously, about seemingly every decision."
"Anthropic has positioned itself as the AI industry's superego: the firm that speaks with the most authority about the big questions surrounding the technology, while rival companies develop advertisements and affiliate shopping links (a difference that Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, was eager to call out during an interview in Davos last week). On Monday, Amodei published a lengthy essay, "The Adolescence of Technology," about the "civilizational concerns" posed by what he calls "powerful AI"-the very technology his firm is developing."
Anthropic balances substantial commercial incentives with deep internal concern about the societal risks of powerful AI. The company presents itself as an ethical leader focused on democratic values, national security, and economic consequences. Executives publicly address political and civilizational risks and emphasize preserving rights and democratic norms. Employees and safety researchers are tasked with vetting products and deliberating deployment decisions. The firm maintains consistent messaging about ethical issues and user safety while competing against major AI companies and managing pressure to ship more advanced chatbots and features quickly.
Read at The Atlantic
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