Anthropic CEO says AI regulation can help smaller firms

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has rejected claims that regulating artificial intelligence would inevitably concentrate power in the hands of a few companies and governments. He argued that carefully designed rules could instead constrain frontier AI firms while giving smaller competitors room to catch up, Livemint reports.

Responding to investor Gavin Baker's argument that AI risks should be addressed by distributing capabilities widely, Amodei called the choice a 'false choice'. He said fair institutional processes can constrain corporate power and protect individuals. Amodei pointed to Anthropic's support for California's SB53 and SB1047, which exempted companies below certain revenue or model-training thresholds, and backed testing frameworks that impose more rigorous requirements on frontier models.

Amodei said AI is structurally prone to concentrating power due to the economics of scaling advanced models. He rejected the suggestion that his public warnings on AI risks have been disproportionately negative, and argued that the industry faces a crisis of public trust. He expressed support for pre-deployment testing for frontier models and for a FINRA-like AI oversight body proposed by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.