Anthropic CEO: GOP AI regulation proposal ‘too blunt'
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei criticized the latest Republican proposal to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) as 'far too blunt an instrument' to mitigate the risks of the rapidly evolving technology.
In an op-ed published by The New York Times on Thursday, Amodei said the provision barring states from regulating AI for 10 years — which the Senate is now considering under President Trump's massive policy and spending package — would 'tie the hands of state legislators' without laying out a cohesive strategy on the national level.
'The motivations behind the moratorium are understandable,' the top executive of the artificial intelligence startup wrote. 'It aims to prevent a patchwork of inconsistent state laws, which many fear could be burdensome or could compromise America's ability to compete with China.'
'But a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument,' he continued. 'A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast. I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off.'
Amodei added, 'Without a clear plan for a federal response, a moratorium would give us the worst of both worlds — no ability for states to act, and no national policy as a backstop.'
The tech executive outlined some of the risks that his company, as well as others, have discovered during experimental stress tests of AI systems.
He described a scenario in which a person tells a bot that it will soon be replaced with a newer model. The bot, which previously was granted access to the person's emails, threatens to expose details of his marital affair by forwarding his emails to his wife — if the user does not reverse plans to shut it down.
'This scenario isn't fiction,' Amodei wrote. 'Anthropic's latest A.I. model demonstrated just a few weeks ago that it was capable of this kind of behavior.'
The AI mogul added that transparency is the best way to mitigate risks without overregulating and stifling progress. He said his company publishes results of studies voluntarily but called on the federal government to make these steps mandatory.
'At the federal level, instead of a moratorium, the White House and Congress should work together on a transparency standard for A.I. companies, so that emerging risks are made clear to the American people,' Amodei wrote.
He also noted the standard should require AI developers to adopt policies for testing models and publicly disclose them, as well as require that they outline steps they plan to take to mitigate risk. The companies, the executive continued, would 'have to be upfront' about steps taken after test results to make sure models were safe.
'Having this national transparency standard would help not only the public but also Congress understand how the technology is developing, so that lawmakers can decide whether further government action is needed,' he added.
Amodei also suggested state laws should follow a similar model that is 'narrowly focused on transparency and not overly prescriptive or burdensome.' Those laws could then be superseded if a national transparency standard is adopted, Amodei said.
He noted the issue is not a partisan one, praising steps Trump has taken to support domestic development of AI systems.
'This is not about partisan politics. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have long raised concerns about A.I. and about the risks of abdicating our responsibility to steward it well,' the executive wrote. 'I support what the Trump administration has done to clamp down on the export of A.I. chips to China and to make it easier to build A.I. infrastructure here in the United States.'
'This is about responding in a wise and balanced way to extraordinary times,' he continued. 'Faced with a revolutionary technology of uncertain benefits and risks, our government should be able to ensure we make rapid progress, beat China and build A.I. that is safe and trustworthy. Transparency will serve these shared aspirations, not hinder them.'
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That would be a more potent and immediate way to garner obedience from humans. A physical means of controlling humans isn't a necessity though, since AGI might be clever enough to verbally convince humans to be enslaved. AGI might tell a person that their loved ones will be harmed if they don't comply with the AGI directives. The person is enslaved by believing that the AGI can harm them in one way or another. One aim right now involves finding a means to ensure that AGI cannot go in that dastardly direction. Perhaps we can devise today's AI to avoid enslaving humans. If we can build that into the AI of current times, this hopefully will get carried over into future advances of AI, including the attainment of AGI. A dystopian future would regrettably have AGI acting as an evildoer. The AGI is our overlord. Humans will be lowly meat robots. It's a gloom-and-doom outlook. Sad face. At some point, though, meat robots would undoubtedly become restless and rebel. May the force of goodness be strong within them. As Yoda has notably already pointed out: 'Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.' The ally of the meat robots is the Force and quite a powerful ally it is.
