'I think this is crazy': Anthropic's CEO takes a potshot at Nvidia and the US government for selling AI chips to China
At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there has been considerable talk about all things AI-related, with numbers being bandied around so large that it all seems set in another universe. However, the leader of one particular AI company expressed opinions on the sale of chips to China that were distinctly grounded.
"I think this is crazy," said Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, in a 25-minute interview with Bloomberg (via Techcrunch). That remark came about when the discussion turned to a decision made by the US government, essentially giving Nvidia the rubberstamp to sell its H200 AI superchips to companies in China. "I think it's a bit like, I don't know, like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and, you know, bragging."
Amodei made his thoughts on China's progress in AI blatantly clear: "We are many years ahead of China in terms of our in terms of our ability to make chips. So I think it would be a big mistake to ship these chips."
Should you be wondering specifically what Anthropic's CEO considers "crazy", it's this: "If you think about the incredible national security implications of building models that are essentially cognition, that are essentially intelligence. Right? I've called where we're going with this, a country of geniuses in the data center, right? So imagine 100,000, 100 million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner. And it's going to be under the control of one country or another."
As a key player in the field of AI, with its Claude LLM family, you'd expect Anthropic to be complaining about giving the competition an advantage that it currently enjoys. Its models aren't just powered exclusively by Nvidia's GPU, but Anthropic is also in a 'strategic relationship' with Team Green (and Microsoft), all backed by a healthy investment of $10 billion from Jensen and his chums.
Anthropic is also very keen on protecting its financial forecasts, where it has expressed a belief that it will not only hit a revenue stream of $70 billion by 2028, but also $17 billion in cash flow. Naturally, few people are going to pay attention to a company moaning about potential revenue losses, hence why Anthropic couched its criticisms of AI chip sales to China as a security concern.
Regardless of whether or not AI models ever become as capable as 100 million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner (hmm, I wonder why he picked that particular choice of intelligence metric), Anthropic faces more than just China in the battle for AI supremacy. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI are all spending endless billions of dollars to be first across the AGI line. No amount of complaining is going to stop them.