Anthropic is one of the largest AI companies, with various versions of its chatbot Claude being used by companies around the world. But according to Anthropic, it's time to slow down the pursuit of smarter AI.
“We believe it would be good for the world to have the ability to slow down or temporarily suspend the development of groundbreaking AI, so that societal structures and research on ethical adaptation have time to keep pace with technological advances,” the company writes.
Anthropic believes that the decision must come from the entire industry to be effective and so that individual countries and companies do not have to struggle between security and falling behind in development.
The warnings from Anthropic have encountered criticism from other companies and the US government, which believes the San Francisco company is being too alarmist.
In response, Anthropic says it is planning a meeting of companies, researchers, and government officials to discuss security. The company warns that AI is already accelerating its own development and that this could eventually lead to systems learning to become smarter on their own - without human help.
“We are not there yet, and it can be avoided.”
