Dario Amodei—chief executive of Anthrophic—has warned we need to ‘pace’ AI (Photo: WikipediaCommons)
Divisions opened up between Donald Trump and tech giants this week over artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Dario Amodei—chief executive of Anthrophic, the creator of the AI chatbot Claude—has called for more regulation. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote.
Sam Altman of OpenAI—the creators of ChatGPT—Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind and Elon Musk of SpaceX all agreed.
Evan Hubinger from Anthropic said, “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans within the next decade”.
The likes of Musk haven’t discovered that they care about humanity. So what are their motivations?
First—follow the money. Wendy Hall, a computer scientist who advises the United Nations on AI, described Hubinger’s and Coxon’s comments as “shocking”. But she said they could be “PR and marketing” as Anthropic and OpenAI race towards launching on the stock market for the first time.
There are real risks—as there would be with any technology that is developed rapidly. But AI technologies are not the stuff of science‑fiction where everyone is wiped out by superintelligence. They are mathematical models that rely on human labour—and a supply chain of fossil fuels, petrochemicals, semiconductors and data centres.
Secondly, big business sometimes demands state regulation to keep out competitors and keep a level playing field.
It is telling that smaller players see Dario’s calls for regulation as a threat. “Dario makes the case to stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic,” writes Chamath Palihapitiya, a tech investor.
A “wild west” capitalism, with little regulation, can allow bosses to rapidly grow their firms—but there are downsides. Hugging Face, which open source models rely on, is no bit player—it was bought out by multinational giant Nvidia.
But, it was hacked by OpenAI systems earlier this year, sparking outcry about AI safety. Clement Delangue, boss of Hugging Face, is keen on regulation and says he must be one of the “embedded evaluators” that Amodei called for. In other words, he’s keen for there to be a level playing field among the big players.
So, why’s Trump dismissed concerns about AI as a “hoax”?
US capitalism has taken “one big bet on AI” investments and it has become a key dimension in imperialist rivalry between the US and China. Trump fears that being forced to put safety rails on it would hinder this.
Amodei too warns, “A Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the US and the world,” and says this is the “toughest dilema” for his proposals. His talk of “global governance” seems pie in the sky in a world of increasing imperialist competition and growing ties between states and corporations.
States and corporations will follow the remorseless logic of capitalism to stay ahead of their rivals.
Socialists are for the democratic, workers’ control over science and technology—and AI could be used to automate mundane and menial tasks without loss of jobs in a society that put people before profit.
But any use of AI would have to consider another reality—how it destroys the environment through guzzling power and water.
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