Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is ‘fundamentally a crisis of trust’
Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is ‘fundamentally a crisis of trust’
Anthropic 首席执行官：AI 抵制潮“本质上是一场信任危机”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently pushed back against the idea that he’s been painting an overly pessimistic picture of artificial intelligence and how it might shape the future. Amodei’s comments came in response to investor Gavin Baker, who argued — both on the All-In podcast and on X — that Amodei’s warnings about the dangers of AI have helped to fuel a backlash in the United States, particularly against data centers.
Anthropic 首席执行官达里奥·阿莫代（Dario Amodei）近日反驳了外界对他“过度悲观地描绘人工智能及其未来影响”的指责。阿莫代此番言论是为了回应投资者加文·贝克（Gavin Baker）。贝克此前在《All-In》播客和社交平台 X 上均表示，阿莫代对 AI 风险的警告助长了美国国内的抵制情绪，尤其是针对数据中心的反对声音。
Claiming that Amodei has “lost the argument” when it comes to AI regulation (Anthropic has advocated for some regulations, including a California bill that imposes transparency requirements on large AI companies), and given that “he is about to be the CEO of one of the most important companies in the world,” Baker wrote, “I respectfully think he should make an effort to be a more positive advocate for his own industry.”
贝克声称，在 AI 监管问题上，阿莫代已经“输掉了辩论”（Anthropic 一直主张实施部分监管，包括支持加州一项要求大型 AI 公司履行透明度义务的法案）。贝克写道，考虑到“他即将成为全球最重要的公司之一的 CEO，我恭敬地认为，他应该努力成为自己行业更积极的倡导者。”
Baker is far from the only one arguing that AI skepticism and even government crackdowns are a natural response to the dire warnings of some AI executives. But in a series of posts, Amodei disagreed with the idea that his “messaging has been disproportionately negative.” Instead, he said that his writing has been “about equally balanced between risks and benefits,” and that he wrote his essay “Machines of Loving Grace” because he “didn’t feel the AI industry was painting an inspiring enough picture of how the technology could radically transform the world for the better.”
认为 AI 怀疑论甚至政府打压是对部分 AI 高管“危言耸听”的自然反应，持这种观点的人远不止贝克一个。但在随后的一系列帖文中，阿莫代不同意他的“信息传递过于负面”的说法。相反，他表示自己的文章在“风险与收益之间保持了大致平衡”，他撰写《充满爱的机器》（Machines of Loving Grace）一文，是因为他“觉得 AI 行业在描绘这项技术如何从根本上改善世界方面，还不够鼓舞人心”。
Nonetheless, Amodei acknowledged that “the public has a negative view of AI” and he agreed that “this is a big problem.” Where he disagreed was with the idea that this negativity is “primarily caused” by Amodei “or any other AI leader warning about AI’s risks.” “I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust,” Amodei said. “I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.”
尽管如此，阿莫代承认“公众对 AI 持负面看法”，并同意“这是一个大问题”。但他不同意这种负面情绪是“主要由”他或其他 AI 领导者对风险的警告所导致的。阿莫代表示：“我认为这本质上是一场信任危机。我认为普通民众不信任企业、政府或科技行业，总是怀疑我们正在密谋什么新花样来坑害他们。”
Indeed, “trust” is a word that often comes up in headlines about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and is apparently an issue for other AI CEOs like Amodei, too. In Amodei’s telling, however, this is a crisis that’s been decades in the making, with the AI backlash “just the latest iteration of it.”
事实上，“信任”一词经常出现在有关 OpenAI 首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）的头条新闻中，显然这也是像阿莫代这样的其他 AI 公司 CEO 面临的问题。然而在阿莫代看来，这场危机已经酝酿了几十年，而针对 AI 的抵制潮“不过是其最新的表现形式”。
“I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world,” Amodei said. “That is totally on us, and I think it’s the criticism you should be making, instead of all this stuff about messaging and marketing.” Put another way, he said promising that AI will cure cancer is “more a cliche than it is inspiring”; what would actually change people’s opinions of AI would be “actually curing cancer.”
“我认为，包括 Anthropic 在内的 AI 公司目前最中肯的批评是，我们尚未兑现造福世界的宏大承诺，”阿莫代说道，“这完全是我们的责任，我认为这才是你们应该提出的批评，而不是纠结于信息传递和营销之类的东西。”换句话说，他认为承诺 AI 能治愈癌症“与其说是鼓舞人心，不如说是陈词滥调”；真正能改变人们对 AI 看法的，是“真正治愈癌症”。
As for regulation, Amodei argued that Baker was painting “a false choice” between distributing AI widely without regulation, or concentrating the technology in the hands of a few companies through regulation. “I know that there’s a sort of Silicon Valley shorthand where regulation = regulatory capture = concentration of power, but I’ve always found this to be an overly simplified picture of the world,” Amodei said. “Many people outside this bubble think of regulation as something that constrains corporate power and benefits ordinary people.”
关于监管，阿莫代认为贝克提出了一个“虚假的二选一”：要么在没有监管的情况下广泛分发 AI，要么通过监管将技术集中在少数几家公司手中。“我知道硅谷有一种简化的逻辑，即监管等于监管俘获，等于权力集中，但我一直认为这是一种过度简化世界的方式，”阿莫代说，“在这个圈子之外，许多人认为监管是约束企业权力、造福普通民众的手段。”
Amodei added that he doesn’t “necessarily agree with that perspective either,” but he said that’s “why Anthropic has always made its policy proposals very carefully.” “We try very hard to make proposals that disadvantage (slow down) frontier AI companies while advantaging smaller competitors,” he said. Why make those proposals at all? Amodei said that in his view, “AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power” and that “open-weights do help some with this but are nowhere near a sufficient solution because they simply shift the concentration somewhat to those with the most compute and chip.”
阿莫代补充说，他“未必完全认同那种观点”，但这就是“Anthropic 在提出政策建议时总是非常谨慎的原因”。他说：“我们非常努力地提出一些建议，旨在削弱（减缓）前沿 AI 公司的优势，同时扶持规模较小的竞争对手。”为什么要提出这些建议？阿莫代认为，“AI 在结构上是一种倾向于权力集中的技术”，“开源权重（open-weights）在一定程度上有所帮助，但远非充分的解决方案，因为它们只是将权力集中转移到了那些拥有最多算力和芯片的人手中。”
“By contrast I think the right ‘rules of the road’ can simultaneously (a) address AI’s cyber/bio/alignment risks, (b) institutionally constrain the power of the frontier AI companies, and (c) leave room for open-weights models while also addressing the specific risks that they bring,” he said.
“相比之下，我认为正确的‘道路规则’可以同时做到：(a) 解决 AI 在网络、生物和对齐方面的风险；(b) 从制度上约束前沿 AI 公司的权力；(c) 在为开源权重模型留出空间的同时，解决它们带来的特定风险。”他说道。