Anthropic's CEO says NVIDIA is essentially selling nukes to North Korea and bragging about it

The CEO of Anthropic has commented on NVIDIA being able to supply China with sophisticated AI chips to power the nation's expansive development in AI, describing the US approving trade between NVIDIA and China as "like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea".

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Dario Amodei spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this week and was asked what he thinks about the US approving the export of high-powered AI chips to China, specifically from NVIDIA. Amodei said, "I think this is crazy. It's a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging that Boeing made the casings."

The response to the question is undoubtedly jarring, especially considering NVIDIA has invested as much as $10 billion into Anthropic, and Anthropic is using NVIDIA hardware to train its own AI models, such as ChatGPT rival, Claude.

Amodei went on to mention specific issues with NVIDIA AI chips making it to China, and that Chinese advancements in the military and security sectors are unlocked by NVIDIA hardware. Amodei stated that he sees both of those sectors of development as an immediate threat, as AI models are "essentially cognition, that are essentially intelligence," and said people should think of these AI models as "100 million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner." But all that intelligence is controlled by one country.