Amodei 承认 Anthropic 三项沟通失误

谢谢你，@_NathanCalvin。我很欣赏并且是你在 AI 安全方面所做调查工作的粉丝，我相信你的评论出自建设性和诚实的立场，而且让那些职责是审视前沿 AI 公司行为的人存在，对公众是有益的。我认为，如果像 Anthropic 这种规模的公司不是基本上每天都受到严厉批评，那反倒有问题；对 corporate power 的强有力抗体是自由社会的一个健康特征，尤其是在我们正面临如此严重的问题时更是如此。我也确实同意你列举的某些例子是 Anthropic 的失误。 话虽如此，我不同意你文章的主旨。从根本上说，你所批评的相当一部分内容，是 Anthropic 多年来坚持的基本变革理论的后果。我们的战略一直是我所称的“向上竞争”——通过展示如何负责任地构建这项技术，我们可以提高整个行业的门槛。如果践行这一战略的公司处于前沿，推动向上竞争的力量就会有效得多；这是我反复学到的一个教训。纵观这一战略整体，我为我们的过往记录感到自豪，并坚持这一战略。 我相信，如果我们列出 Anthropic 过去一年所做的、有利于安全但在商业上对我们代价高昂的事情，这份清单远远超过你所列出的清单，同时我也不同意你清单上的某些项目。以下是一些 Anthropic 在你所引用的同一时期（过去一年）所做的事情，这些事在商业上对我们代价极高，却带来了强大的安全效益： 1. 我们在 SB53（以及其他州法律）中发挥了关键作用，而当时这样做对公司而言在政治上是危险的，AI 监管也非常不受欢迎。事实上，我们主张的 SB53 版本比最终通过的版本更强；当时有很多利益相关者，而我们在最终通过法案的强度上并不是限制因素。 2. 我们对我们的模型设有非常强大的生物安全防护，因为我们在生物能力提升试验中看到了令人担忧的结果，甚至看到并阻止了可能滥用我们模型制造生物武器的企图（正如几周前我们的威胁情报报告中所见）。这是一个非常严重的威胁，我们希望对其零容忍。但极低的假阴性意味着显著的假阳性（尽管我们花了数月努力改进分类器），以至于生物学家开玩笑说我们的分类器限制太严，而竞争对手有时通过吹嘘其更宽松的生物能力来向我们推销。在我们非常关心支持 Claude 用户生态系统（生物医学科学；作为生物学家，这尤其令我沮丧）的领域，这对我们来说非常痛苦，但这是正确的事，我们打算继续这样做。 3. 同样，我们在二月份首次拥有 Mythos 级模型，但直到六月（当我们有了更强的网络安全防护）才将其全面开放。我们只向有限的一组合作伙伴提供这些模型，以便专注于网络防御。从经济角度看，直接向所有人发布模型会合理得多。我们很可能牺牲了数月模型领先优势中的很大一部分。但正因如此，许多公司在广泛可用的具备网络能力的模型大量涌现之前，就加固了自己的网络基础设施。当然，事情本可以做得更好或运营得更好，但这正是我们当时的目标。 4. 今年六月，我在我的文章《AI 指数增长的政策》中，强烈而公开地主张政府应有权阻止模型发布。当时这仍处于奥弗顿窗口之外，或者可能处于边缘，尽管我理解此后窗口已经移动。我们因此受到猛烈攻击。 5. 我不想重新点燃冲突，但 2026 年 2 月的事件是一个强有力的例子。很明显，我们的公开立场本可能严重损害公司的未来。 6. 我们一直主张对向中国出口芯片和芯片制造设备实施出口管制，因为我们认为这能让民主国家在 AI 安全协议上从实力地位进行谈判。我们这样做，尽管这给我们与持非常不同观点、且我们非常依赖的行业伙伴带来了问题。 7. 据我所知，我们是第一家、且仍是唯一一家限制向中国控制的企业（包括通过第三国运营的企业，否则将是一个重大漏洞）销售 AI 服务的前沿公司。因此，我们放弃了可观的短期业务，以防止助长那些会帮助中共军事和情报部门的 AI 平台和应用。我们也在打击蒸馏；一般来说，蒸馏在商业上对我们不构成重大威胁，但像芯片出口一样，它具有令人担忧的国家安全和安全影响，因此我们投入大量精力和公司资源来应对。 8. 正如你提到的，我们发布了很多报告、公告、长篇模型卡、公开倡导等，都是为了向公众告知 AI 的风险。这些所涉及的细节和努力程度，对于一个纯粹追求利润最大化的公司来说是不可想象的。 9. 就在本周，我们宣布将公司 5%（随着时间推移可能更多）投入一个公共利益基金。 所有这些决定都给我们带来了非常巨大的成本。公平地说，那些涉及抑制或限制前沿能力获取的决定也带来了更广泛的成本——例如，公众本来可能从生物学更快的进展中受益，所以我并不是说我们的决定没有权衡——但它们并非由逐利驱动。 对于每一项决定，你都可以想出可能驱动我们的不可告人的动机——我认为一个普遍的事实是，任何决定，无论涉及什么话题，总是可以被描绘成一项邪恶的阴谋。但如果你仔细审视，其中大多数最终都相当牵强，或者并不完全说得通。例如，为了自己开展研究并与我们的客户竞争而阻断一大片研究生物学领域，这作为一项精明的商业举措是极不可信的；我们预期生态系统所获得的收益将大大超过 Anthropic 自身所做的工作，并且两者能够相辅相成。被认为对生物学家不友好并不符合 Anthropic 的利益。我们的生命科学验证计划让经过审核的生物学专业人士能够访问我们的模型，这也驳斥了这一想法。 当然，另一群人看到这些后会提出不同的批评：Anthropic 根本就不应该决定谁可以获得什么。我同意，从理想情况来说，这些决定应该由政府来做，这也是我们倡导监管的原因。但就目前而言，我们被迫做出这些决定，而助长生物恐怖主义并不是更好的选择。 我认为，即使我承认你清单上的每一项，我也会乐于把我的清单摆在旁边；我不认为这是一场势均力敌的比较。这当然部分是主观的，不同的事情对不同的人很重要。也许你可以反对的一点是，上述若干项涉及 AI 滥用而非失控；如果你认为后者比前者重要得多，那可能会改变你的权衡。但这不是 Anthropic 的观点——我们认为两者都是严重问题。你也可以不同意我们的决定，正如许多人已经做的那样，但这些决定是一致的。 但我也至少不同意你清单中的一部分。一旦我们假定需要成为前沿 AI 公司的“向上竞争”战略，有几项就完全不代表对 Anthropic 战略或价值观的偏离。你的第 1-4 项都只是说明这意味着什么的例子

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Thank you for this, @_NathanCalvin. I appreciate and am a fan of the investigative work you’ve done on behalf of AI safety and believe your comments are coming from a constructive, honest place, and that it benefits the public to have people whose job is to scrutinize the actions of frontier AI companies. I think something would be wrong if companies of the size of Anthropic didn’t get harshly criticized basically every day; strong antibodies against corporate power are a healthy feature of a free society, and especially so when issues of the gravity of the one we’re facing are at play. I also do agree that some of the examples you cite were mistakes by Anthropic. That said, I disagree with the thrust of your post. At the core, a good fraction of the things you criticize are consequences of Anthropic’s basic theory of change that we have held for many years. Our strategy has always been what I’ve called the “race to the top” — by showing how it’s possible to build the technology responsibly, we can raise the bar for the entire industry. The forces that drive the race to the top are hugely more effective if the company practicing them is at the frontier; that’s one lesson I’ve learned repeatedly. And looking at that strategy as a whole, I’m proud of our track record and stand by it. I believe that if we take a list of things that Anthropic did in the past year that were pro-safety and commercially costly to us, they far outweigh the list you’ve made, while at the same time I also disagree with some of the items on your list. Here are some things Anthropic has done, in the same period you’ve cited (the last year), which were very costly to us commercially while having strong safety benefits: 1. We played a key role in SB53 (and other state laws), at a time when doing so was politically perilous to the company and AI regulation was very unpopular. We in fact argued for a stronger version of SB53 than was ultimately passed; there were a lot of stakeholders and we were not the limiting factor in the strength of the bill that was passed. 2. We have very strong biological safeguards on our models, because we’ve seen concerning results in bio uplift trials and even seen and blocked potential attempts to misuse our models for bioweapons (as seen in our threat intelligence report from a few weeks ago). This is a very serious threat that we want to have zero tolerance for. But having very low false negatives means having significant false positives (despite months of effort on our part to improve the classifiers), enough so that biologists joke about how restrictive our classifiers are, and competitors sometimes sell against us by touting their more permissive bio capabilities. This has been very painful to us in an area where we care a lot about supporting an ecosystem of Claude users (biomedical science; and it is particularly frustrating to me as a biologist), but it’s the right thing to do and we intend to keep doing it. 3. Similarly, we first had Mythos-class models in February but didn’t make them generally available until June (when we had stronger cyber safeguards in place). We only offered them to a limited set of partners in order to focus on cyberdefense. It would have been much more economically rational to simply release the model to everyone. We likely sacrificed a significant chunk of a several-month model lead. But because of this, many companies secured their cyber infrastructure before the deluge of widely available cyber-capable models. Of course there are ways it could have gone better or been run better, but this was what we were aiming to do. 4. I advocated forcefully and publicly, in my essay Policy on the AI Exponential in June of this year, for the government to have the power to block model releases. Back then this was still outside or maybe on the edge of the Overton window, though I understand the window has moved since then. We were attacked intensely for this. 5. I don’t want to re-ignite conflict, but the events of February 2026 are a strong example. It is clear that our public stance could have seriously damaged the company’s future. 6. We’ve continued to advocate for export controls on chips and chipmaking equipment to China, because we think it allows democracies to negotiate from a position of strength on AI safety agreements. We’ve done this despite problems it’s created for us with industry partners who hold very different views and on whom we are very dependent. 7. As far as I’m aware we were the first, and still only, frontier company to restrict the sale of AI services to PRC-controlled companies, including those operating through third countries (otherwise a major loophole). We’ve therefore forfeited significant short-term business to prevent fueling AI platforms and applications that would help the CCP’s military and intelligence services. We are also cracking down on distillation; generally, distillation is not a major threat to us commercially, but like chip exports it has concerning national security and safety implications, so we expend significant energy and company resources to address it. 8. As you mentioned, we’ve put out a lot of reports, announcements, long model cards, public advocacy, etc, all trying to inform the public about the risks of AI. These involve a level of detail and effort that would be implausible for a purely profit-maximizing company. 9. Just this week, we announced we were putting 5% (and possibly more over time) of the company into a public benefit fund. All of these decisions came with very substantial costs to us. To be fair, those that involved holding back or restricting access to frontier capabilities also had a broader cost — for example, the public might otherwise have benefitted from faster progress in biology, so I am not saying that our decisions were without tradeoffs — but they were not driven by profit-seeking. For each decision, you can come up with ulterior motives that could have driven us — I think it is a general truth that any decision, on any topic, can always be portrayed as a nefarious scheme. But most of those end up being pretty farfetched or don’t fully make sense if you actually examine them closely. For example, it is deeply implausible that it would be a shrewd business move to block a large swath of research biology in order to do the work ourselves and compete with our customers; we expect the benefit to the ecosystem to greatly exceed the work Anthropic does itself, and for the two to complement each other. It is not in Anthropic’s interest to be perceived as unfriendly to biologists. Our Life Sciences Verification Program, which gives vetted biology professionals access to our models, also refutes this idea. Of course, a different set of people will see this and make a different criticism: that Anthropic shouldn't be making decisions about who gets access to what in the first place. I agree, in the sense that ideally the government would be making these decisions, and that’s why we advocate for regulation. But for now we are forced to make them, and enabling bioterrorism isn’t a better option. I think that even if I conceded every item in your list, I would happily hold up mine next to it; I don’t think it’s a close call. That is of course partly subjective and different things are important to different people. Maybe one way you could object is that several of the items above relate to AI misuse and not loss-of-control; if you think the latter is much more important than the former, that might change your calculus. But this is not Anthropic’s view — we view both as serious issues. You can also disagree with our decisions, as many have, but they are consistent. But I also disagree with at least some of your list. Several items don’t represent a deviation from Anthropic’s strategy or values at all, once we postulate the “race to the top” strategy that requires being a frontier AI company. Your items 1-4 are all simply examples of what it mea