Amodei red-flags autonomous weapons & mass surveillance

NEW DELHI: Anthropic has raised concerns about development of fully autonomous weapons without a human in the loop and mass surveillance of US citizens, its co-founder and chief executive Dario Amodei said.

Speaking to a TV channel on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit on Thursday, he said these red lines are critical and it is essential to ensure AI is used in a way that is compatible with democracy and aligned with the company's values. He was responding to a question on whether the company could face blacklisting by the US govt because of its restrictions on how the technology is used. "We continue to have productive discussions and are excited to help countries in national security," he said. Addressing the sell-off in IT stocks amid fears around AI models, Amodei said the company is not trying to replace the existing industry but to work with it. He compared Anthropic to Lego blocks, saying other companies build on its models. However, he acknowledged that some disruption is inevitable. Earlier in the day, he said India could see 20-25% economic growth driven by AI-led productivity gains. "It sounds absurd, and is unknown anywhere in the world. But as I think about this, it kind of stacks all the factors for a very bullish picture of how that growth could happen. India has technical capabilities and eagerness to adopt AI... India almost seems like a perfect case study that AI can accelerate economic growth because AI will help tie together the base ingredients already present here," he said. He said Anthropic is making a concerted push to improve its models' performance in Indic languages.