"Catch up quick: Jack Clark, Anthropic's cofounder and policy head, on Monday shared a short essay titled "Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear." It argues that too many people are pretending that AI cannot threaten humanity, and that we need to acknowledge a different reality before figuring out how to "tame it and live together." White House AI czar David Sacks responded by claiming that "Anthropic is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.""
"The fight is as much about state-level regulations as it is federal ones. The White House supported a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI laws, proposed as part of the Big Beautiful Bill negotiations, arguing that 50 different rules in 50 different states would sow chaos and slow innovation. Anthropic called the moratorium "too blunt" and, after it failed to become law, endorsed a major piece of AI legislation in California."
"Both sides support some sort of federal policy, although Sacks' driving philosophy so far has been to unwind federal safety work and "let them cook." A big question for the White House is if Sacks is being hypocritical when accusing Anthropic of "regulatory capture" - given that Sacks and others on the White House AI policy team hail from monied tech interests in Silicon Valley."
Jack Clark and Anthropic emphasize that technological optimism must be balanced by recognition of AI threats to enable strategies for taming and coexisting with advanced systems. David Sacks and the White House have accused Anthropic of leveraging fear to advance a regulatory capture strategy. The dispute is as much about state versus federal regulation as about motive; the White House backed a 10-year moratorium on state AI laws while Anthropic opposed the moratorium and endorsed California legislation after the moratorium failed. Both sides claim support for federal policy, but differ on safety priorities, political alignment, and influence in Washington.
Read at Axios
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]