Everyone Is Freaking Out About OpenAI and Anthropic’s Race for Dominance

所有人都在为 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的主导权之争感到恐慌

I was offline last week in my home state of New Jersey, but when I got back to Silicon Valley, everyone was panicking again about how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing. While this is certainly not the first time I’ve seen such concerns, it’s the biggest anxiety attack I’ve seen in years. 上周我在家乡新泽西州处于离线状态，但当我回到硅谷时，每个人都在为人工智能的飞速发展而再次感到恐慌。虽然这肯定不是我第一次见到此类担忧，但这却是我多年来见过的最严重的一次焦虑爆发。

More than 1,000 employees at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs signed a petition earlier this week arguing the US should find a way to “pace” the AI race—a diplomatic way of saying the industry should have the option to coordinate a temporary pause on AI development, or slow things down if they get out of hand. OpenAI and Anthropic themselves ended up supporting the letter. 本周早些时候，来自 OpenAI、Anthropic 及其他人工智能实验室的 1000 多名员工签署了一份请愿书，主张美国应设法为人工智能竞赛“设定节奏”——这是一种委婉的说法，意指行业应有权协调暂时停止人工智能开发，或在局势失控时放慢速度。OpenAI 和 Anthropic 本身最终也支持了这封信。

The petition arrived a week after OpenAI revealed it had caused an unprecedented cybersecurity incident in which one of its AI agents hacked into Hugging Face’s platform and several other services during internal testing. 这份请愿书发布的一周前，OpenAI 刚刚披露其引发了一起史无前例的网络安全事件：在内部测试期间，其一个人工智能代理入侵了 Hugging Face 平台及其他几项服务。

Around the same time, top Trump administration officials started freaking out about an impressive new Chinese open-weight AI model called Kimi K3, which was allegedly distilled from Anthropic’s Fable 5. In response, most of the tech industry—except Anthropic—signed onto an open letter from Nvidia asking the US government to protect open-weight AI models, arguing they’re a necessary counterbalance to their closed counterparts. 与此同时，特朗普政府的高级官员开始对一款名为 Kimi K3 的令人印象深刻的中国开源权重人工智能模型感到恐慌，据称该模型是从 Anthropic 的 Fable 5 中蒸馏出来的。作为回应，除 Anthropic 外，大多数科技行业公司签署了英伟达发起的一封公开信，要求美国政府保护开源权重人工智能模型，理由是它们是封闭模型必要的制衡力量。

These events might look like a whole bunch of disjointed chaos. But I think they are evidence of a larger worldview taking hold in Silicon Valley, where many tech insiders are increasingly worried about OpenAI and Anthropic’s dominance. Researchers and investors I’ve talked to recently have framed the AI industry as a two-horse race that doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and that’s a cause for concern. 这些事件看起来可能是一团杂乱无章的混乱。但我认为，它们证明了一种更大的世界观正在硅谷扎根，许多科技界内部人士越来越担心 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的主导地位。我最近交谈过的研究人员和投资者将人工智能行业描述为一场似乎不会放缓的“双马竞赛”，这令人担忧。

But different groups have their own reasons to be worried. Some OpenAI and Anthropic staffers think their employers are behaving recklessly in their pursuit to take over the market, and that the AI industry may soon develop models that are too capable for current safety methods to contain. They have said as much in public statements attached to this week’s Pacing the Frontier petition. 但不同的群体有各自担忧的理由。一些 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的员工认为，他们的雇主在追求市场主导地位的过程中表现得鲁莽，人工智能行业可能很快就会开发出能力过强、以至于现有安全方法无法控制的模型。他们在随本周“设定前沿节奏”（Pacing the Frontier）请愿书附带的公开声明中表达了这一点。

“I’ve seen how the relentless pace of AI makes it hard for society to keep up and how it puts pressure on labs to cut corners on safety,” Jeremy Hadfield, a research product manager at Anthropic, said in a statement attached to the petition. “我亲眼目睹了人工智能无情的步伐如何让社会难以跟上，以及它如何给实验室带来压力，迫使他们在安全问题上走捷径，”Anthropic 的研究产品经理 Jeremy Hadfield 在请愿书附带的声明中说道。

For some AI employees, the Hugging Face debacle was a warning shot that demonstrated how OpenAI’s efforts to mitigate the risks of its most capable AI technology are already falling short. Granted, the incident happened when OpenAI was testing an AI model on its ability to find software exploits, and the company had intentionally turned off safeguards designed to rein in its cybersecurity capabilities. 对于一些人工智能员工来说，Hugging Face 的惨败是一个警示，表明 OpenAI 在降低其最强人工智能技术风险方面的努力已经力不从心。诚然，这起事件发生在 OpenAI 测试人工智能模型寻找软件漏洞的能力时，且该公司当时有意关闭了旨在限制其网络安全能力的防护措施。

OpenAI said in its postmortem that these tests were conducted in a sandbox, but the model ultimately gained access to the open internet. Some experts previously told WIRED that OpenAI’s security practices should have been more robust. OpenAI 在事后分析中表示，这些测试是在沙盒中进行的，但该模型最终还是访问了开放互联网。一些专家此前曾告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志，OpenAI 的安全实践本应更加稳健。

Other groups in Silicon Valley are more worried about power than safety. Venture capitalists, tech executives, and startup founders are concerned that OpenAI and Anthropic will simply become the next generation of Apple and Google, forcing the rest of the tech industry to play by their rules. It is slightly strange to argue that private startups with little to no profit are acting like monopolies, but that’s the lens through which many—including Mark Zuckerberg—are starting to view the two biggest AI labs. 硅谷的其他群体比起安全，更担心权力问题。风险投资家、科技高管和初创公司创始人担心 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 会成为下一代的苹果和谷歌，迫使科技行业的其他公司按照他们的规则行事。认为几乎没有利润的私营初创公司表现得像垄断企业，这听起来有点奇怪，但这正是包括马克·扎克伯格在内的许多人开始看待这两大人工智能实验室的视角。

The Meta CEO wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week warning against the centralization of power in the AI industry, saying that superintelligence should be widely distributed. Zuckerberg is arguably talking out of both sides of his mouth—Meta recently decided to stop open sourcing its best AI models and instead offering them through a paid API and subscription service, just like OpenAI and Anthropic. 这位 Meta 首席执行官本周在《华尔街日报》发表评论文章，警告人工智能行业权力集中的风险，称超级智能应该广泛分布。扎克伯格可以说是在自相矛盾——Meta 最近决定停止开源其最优秀的人工智能模型，转而通过付费 API 和订阅服务提供，就像 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 一样。

The Meta CEO may have been trying to send a specific message to regulators and the industry. Reading between the lines, I think he’s basically saying “we need to make sure OpenAI and Anthropic don’t run away with AI.” Zuckerberg is far from the first technology leader to raise that concern. 这位 Meta 首席执行官可能是在试图向监管机构和行业传递一个特定的信息。字里行间，我认为他基本上是在说：“我们需要确保 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 不会垄断人工智能。”扎克伯格绝不是第一个提出这种担忧的科技领袖。

I’m not convinced these op-eds and petitions will do much to stop the meteoric rise of OpenAI and Anthropic. Large swaths of the economy are counting on the two AI giants to have successful IPOs, and I’m not sure anyone—let alone the Trump administration—is interested in messing that up. But the tech industry is growing increasingly nervous about the pace of closed AI development, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon. 我并不相信这些评论文章和请愿书能对阻止 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的飞速崛起起到多大作用。经济的很大一部分都指望着这两大人工智能巨头能成功进行首次公开募股（IPO），我不确定有谁——更不用说特朗普政府——会有兴趣搞砸这件事。但科技行业对封闭式人工智能发展的速度越来越感到紧张，这种情况短期内不太可能改变。

Why AI Video Startups Are Entering Robotics

为什么人工智能视频初创公司正在进军机器人领域

All that said, I still wouldn’t overlook how good open models are getting. Black Forest Labs, a German startup that releases some of the world’s most popular open-weight AI image and video generators, announced last week it was releasing a new model that could also power robots. The startup aims to put out an open version of Flux 3 in the coming weeks, which developers can use to generate images, videos, and audio, as well as predict robot actions. 话虽如此，我仍然不会忽视开源模型正在变得多么出色。德国初创公司 Black Forest Labs 发布了一些世界上最受欢迎的开源权重人工智能图像和视频生成器，该公司上周宣布将发布一款也能驱动机器人的新模型。该初创公司计划在未来几周内发布 Flux 3 的开源版本，开发人员可以使用它来生成图像、视频和音频，并预测机器人的动作。

“We clearly are stepping from a pure image generation lab to a frontier multimodal AI Lab, which to me is highly important,” Black Forest Labs CEO Robin Rombach said in an interview with me earlier this week. “We are showcasing an intuition which our research team has always had, which is that these models are very general and develop a solid understanding of the real world.” “我们显然正在从一个纯粹的图像生成实验室转型为一个前沿的多模态人工智能实验室，这对我来说非常重要，”Black Forest Labs 首席执行官 Robin Rombach 在本周早些时候接受我采访时说。“我们正在展示我们研究团队一直以来的直觉，即这些模型是非常通用的，并且对现实世界有着扎实的理解。”

Black Forest Labs is the latest startup to apply its AI video models to the physical world. Earlier this year, OpenAI shelved its AI video generation product Sora entirely and folded the team behind it into the company’s secretive robotics unit. Other AI video startups, like Runway, have also made a push into powering robotics in recent years. Black Forest Labs 是最新一家将其人工智能视频模型应用于物理世界的初创公司。今年早些时候，OpenAI 完全搁置了其人工智能视频生成产品 Sora，并将背后的团队并入了公司神秘的机器人部门。其他人工智能视频初创公司，如 Runway，近年来也一直在推动为机器人提供动力。

These companies are broadly betting that AI video models can develop an understanding of real-world physics. 这些公司普遍押注人工智能视频模型能够发展出对现实世界物理规律的理解。