It is not nefarious, nor even surprising, that Anthropic is speaking differently to policymakers than developers. Companies tailor messages to different groups all the time, and Anthropic has been open about AI’s risks in ways other companies have chosen to stay silent about. Still, experiencing these two different narratives so close together gave me a profound sense of whiplash. In one sense, Anthropic has a credible claim to hold the keys to perhaps the most powerful technology of all time, while taking it upon itself to warn governments and societies of that inconvenient fact. In another very real sense, it is still a normal software company, dependent on the whims of fickle developers in hoodies and jeans.
If Clark is right, nothing about this moment in time will last for long. The developers Anthropic is currently so dependent on will find themselves replaced by machines faster than they can say “recursive self-improvement.” Perhaps that’s why his predictions didn’t find their way into Wednesday’s keynotes.
