New Delhi: Leading AI giant Anthropic has sounded a warning—the US must remain ahead of China in the AI race as transformative systems could arrive by 2028 and reshape global power dynamics.
The paper titled ‘2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership’ comes at a time when US President Donald Trump is on a visit to China to meet his counterpart Xi Jinping, where competition over technology is one of the key points of discussion, along with Taiwan and tariffs.
“It’s essential that the US and its allies stay ahead of authoritarian governments like the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. AI will soon become powerful enough to be used to repress citizens at (an) unprecedented scale, and even to alter the balance of power among nations,” the statement read.
This also comes at a time when Anthropic’s Mythos AI recently sent off alarms across the world because of the alleged threat it could pose to global cybersecurity. Eventually, Anthropic ruled out releasing Mythos before making sure it could not be exploited by hackers.
Anthropic argues that a key ingredient for developing AI is access to computer chips, and the US government seems to have limited China’s supply of American chips.
“In fact, AI labs in China have only built models close in intelligence to America’s because of their talent, their knack for exploiting loopholes around these export controls, and their large-scale distillation attacks that illicitly extract the innovations of American companies,” said the statement.
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Two scenarios
The AI giant presents two scenarios going forward. In one, the US “defends its compute advantage” through policy decisions. Here, Anthropic sees the rules and norms of AI being dictated by democracies. The second scenario is a catastrophe, according to Anthropic.
“In this world (second scenario), AI norms and rules are shaped by authoritarian regimes, and the best models enable automated repression at scale,” the statement reads.
Anthropic also warns that the People’s Liberation Army could procure Chinese AI systems for military use. However, the US military too has openly declared that it wants to increase its use of AI.
On 1 May, the US Department of War had signed eight agreements with Google, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Oracle, Nvidia and the start-up Reflection, which are some of the biggest names in the tech world.
“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon had said in the press release.
While the deals came soon after Anthropic ended its partnership with the US over concerns about how AI would be used in warfare, Anthropic’s stance did not change US policy vis-a-vis using AI in the military.
In its statement, Anthropic says that the US should take action to make sure China cannot smuggle chips or take advantage of foreign data centre access. Yet, it is unclear when those policy decisions will be taken, by which government, and where they will be accepted and implemented globally.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)