Anthropic warns humans could lose control of AI. here’s how the tech world reacted

Anthropic’s warnings about the rapidly improving pace of AI development have drawn reactions from a range of people, from Donald Trump’s former crypto czar David Sacks to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Notably, the company in a blog post earlier in the week warned that AI systems could eventually reach a stage where they are capable of designing their own successors, a concept known as recursive self-improvement.

The blog, written by Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and the head of its research institute, Marina Favaro, notes that once AI systems reach this stage, it increases the ‘risks of humans losing control over AI systems’.

“If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing,” the company said.

How is the tech world reacting to Anthropic’s warnings?

Donald Trump’s former adviser David Sacks, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), criticised Anthropic for trying to get its AI lab nationalised.

“You compare it to nukes… threaten half of white-collar jobs… warn recursive self-improvement could end humanity… then race ahead anyway. In other words, you want the government to save us from… you,” wrote Sacks.

Meanwhile, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wrote on X, “Our highest and most urgent national priority should be AI safeguards. The risks of AI weapons, pathogens, mass unemployment, surveillance, and even extinction must not continue to be largely ignored.”

Andrew B. Hall, a Stanford professor of political economy who previously advised Meta Platforms, said that Anthropic’s proposal wasn’t ‘far-fetched’.

“This would have seemed totally non-credible even pretty recently, but between what we’ve seen with the EO, Glasswing, and OpenAI’s proposal for beefed-up model review yesterday, it no longer seems so far-fetched,” Hall wrote on X.

Hall added that while he remains sceptical, he is interested in seeing whether the mechanisms Anthropic, Demis Hassabis and others propose can coordinate a possible future slowdown.

“If nothing else, it might be possible to agree to slow down consumer release of models separate from development, something Hassabis seems to support based on my read of The Infinity Machine and his preference for pure research,” he added.

Gary Marcus, a prominent AI researcher and professor emeritus at New York University, said that Anthropic doesn’t really want a pause on AI development and is instead playing out a rhetorical strategy ahead of its IPO this year.

“Reading between the lines, they want it both ways. They don’t actually want a pause, at least for now. Rather, they want to (and will) rush ahead, hinting at ‘least cautious actors’ for justification,” Marcus noted.

“Instead, they want people to talk about an ‘option’ they don’t actually plan to take, and are unlikely to ever take. (More likely, they will, as always, hint at China and continue to rush ahead.) It’s an incredible, cost-free piece of rhetoric, perfectly timed for the IPO,” he added.