Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei publicly criticized the U.S. administration and major chipmakers after the government approved the sale of certain high-performance AI chips to approved Chinese customers, raising concerns about national security and long-term consequences.
U.S. Reverses Ban On Certain AI Chip Exports
Last week, the U.S. administration reversed an earlier restriction and formally approved the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips, along with a chip line from AMD, to approved customers in China. While the processors are not the most advanced models currently available, they are considered high-performance chips used for artificial intelligence workloads, making the export decision contentious.
Davos Remarks Target Administration And Chipmakers
Speaking Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dario Amodei sharply criticized both the policy change and the companies involved. His comments were delivered during an interview with Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief.
Amodei challenged claims made by chip industry executives that export controls were hindering U.S. competitiveness. He said the decision to allow the chips to be shipped would have negative consequences for the United States.
“We are many years ahead of China in terms of our ability to make chips,” Amodei said, adding that shipping the processors would be a mistake.
National Security Concerns Raised
During the discussion, Amodei described what he said were the national security implications of advanced AI systems. He referred to AI models as representing cognition and intelligence, and warned about the concentration of such capabilities under the control of a single country.
Amodei compared the administration’s decision to selling nuclear weapons to a hostile state, using the analogy to underscore his opposition to the export approvals.
Tension With A Key Business Partner
The remarks drew attention because Nvidia is both a major partner and investor in Anthropic. Nvidia supplies the graphics processing units used to train and run Anthropic’s AI models across cloud platforms operated by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
Nvidia recently announced plans to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic. The companies disclosed that financial relationship and a technology partnership two months ago, highlighting efforts to optimize their respective systems.
Anthropic’s Market Position
Anthropic has raised billions of dollars in funding and has established a strong position in the AI sector. Its Claude coding assistant has gained traction among developers working on complex software projects.
Amodei’s comments did not reference any immediate business consequences from his remarks, and Anthropic did not issue further statements following the Davos appearance.
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