Why An Anthropic Researcherβs Terminator-Style Warning Caught Fire
An Anthropic safety researcherβs warning Tuesday that his company believes AI βcould kill all humansβ within a decade has reverberated throughout Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, potentially complicating the Claude makerβs upcoming initial public offering and its efforts to repair ties with U.S. political leaders.
As the comment circulated around the internet and on TV broadcasts, some Anthropic employees and other AI staffers defended their efforts to minimize harm their technology might causeβwhile acknowledging there was much work to do. Paul Christiano, whom OpenAI just tapped as a board director of a nonprofit that oversees the company, echoed the Anthropic warning in a statement Wednesday, saying that βIf we build superintelligence without more robust alignmentββor safety constraintsββI expect we will permanently lose control of it. If that happens then most people could die.β