At first glance, Anthropic’s strong message and its actions seem fundamentally contradictory.
But many people within the company do not see any contradiction. To understand why, you must first understand that Anthropic operates based on two core assumptions. The first is that artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology in human history and its arrival is inevitable. The only real question is whether it leads to destruction or extraordinary prosperity.
The second is that Anthropic believes the world would be better off if it stayed ahead of the AI race, according to several former employees who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity. Internally, company leaders and employees often refer to themselves as “the good guys,” meaning responsible stewards of AI technology, two of the sources said. The company views the accumulation of power – whether in the form of capital, compute, research talent, or political influence – not as an end in itself, but as the price of fulfilling its mission: “to ensure that the world transforms safely through transformative AI.”
Helen Toner, executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and former OpenAI board member, uses an analogy to describe Anthropic’s worldview. She compares powerful AI to a forest full of magical treasures and dangerous monsters. All the villagers nearby are running away due to the greed of treasure. According to its statement, Anthropic wants to venture farther into the wild than anyone else while investing heavily in taming the monsters – that is, capturing AI’s benefits while controlling its destructive risks.
“What’s distinctive about Anthropic is that, ‘People are going into the woods anyway, we have to do it first.’ This is clearly their strategy: build cutting-edge AI to become a serious player at the table that can talk about what cutting-edge AI systems should look like, what risks they pose, and pushing for appropriate safeguards,” Toner tells me. “They’re very straightforward about it. It’s such a strange strategy that people have a hard time hearing it.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei clearly outlined this approach in a conversation with his co-founders posted on the company’s career page: “You have to find a way to be really competitive, really lead the industry in some respects, and still manage things safely,” he says. “If you can do that, the gravitational pull you exert will be tremendous.”
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees who defected after losing confidence in the ability of the company’s leadership—specifically CEO Sam Altman—to safely bring transformative AI to the world. That spirit still shapes the company today. Two of the former employees I spoke to say that, in internal discussions, Anthropic executives often describe Altman and OpenAI — and, to a lesser extent, Meta and Elon Musk’s XAI — as cautionary examples that help define Anthropic’s sense of responsibility.
In many respects, Anthropic is just like any other Silicon Valley company. Many startups promote themselves as Davids fighting the older, stronger Goliaths of the industries they seek to disrupt. Google, Facebook and Apple were all based on idealistic principles that were later tarnished or abandoned altogether as they became richer, bigger and more influential.
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