Our position on open-weights models
2 days ago
- Anthropic and its CEO, Dario Amodei, do not advocate for a ban on open-weights models, viewing them as a public good when lacking dangerous capabilities.
- The primary concern is authoritarian governments, particularly China, using powerful AI for military or repressive purposes, which is unrelated to open-weights access by US businesses.
- A secondary concern is the misuse of powerful AI models for cyber or biological attacks; open-weights increase risk due to difficulty in applying guardrails, but banning US business use does not address this.
- Anthropic supports three measures: restricting chip sales to China, cracking down on industrial-scale distillation, and mandatory safety testing for all sufficiently capable models, regardless of openness.
- There is disagreement with the open letter's claims that open-weights models inherently aid safeguards or defenders, arguing such questions should be resolved by empirical testing.