Anthropic calls for pause of global AI development

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic suggested Thursday a global pause on building the most powerful AI systems as the latest models are beginning to show signs they could escape human control.

The San Francisco-based company, which makes the Claude family of AI models, said in a report that a worldwide slowdown in cutting-edge AI development would “likely be a good thing” — but warned that if only one company stopped, rivals would simply race ahead.

“We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology,” it said.

That idea may prove somewhat unpopular with the likes of Elon Musk, as the hotly anticipated stock market debut of his SpaceX company — which owns his artificial intelligence venture xAI — is expected to make him the world’s first trillionaire.

“Without a global coordination mechanism, companies and governments will have to make difficult decisions about safety while under competitive and geopolitical pressures,” Anthropic said.

The company has faced pushback from others in the industry — and officials in the White House — who say its focus on worst-case scenarios overstates the risks and amounts to a strategy for slowing rivals under the cover of safety concerns.

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