Global capitalism bets it all on AI future, alarming voters

Anthropic, the $965 billion AI startup, filed confidentially to go public and then suggested a global slowdown in AI development might be beneficial, alarming voters. Critics accuse the company of 'doom marketing,' but co-founder Jack Clark says they are revealing the truth about AI's immense implications.

Days after filing confidentially to go public, Anthropic, the $965 billion artificial intelligence juggernaut that’s one of the fastest-growing startups of all time, dropped another bombshell. In a blog post, Anthropic suggested the world might benefit from a slowdown in development of the very technologies that have been minting cash for the company. Provided global peers agreed, and enforcement mechanisms could be set up, that would help societies deal with the “immense implications” of AI, it said. Critics have long accused Anthropic of “doom marketing” — hyping its own products as so good that they’re bad. But the post’s co-author, who’s also the company’s co-founder, says the motive is very different. “We say this stuff because we think the world needs to know the truth about what’s happening,” Jack Clark, who now heads Anthropic’s public benefit work, said in an interview.