Anthropic CEO：赢得公众对 AI 的信任，关键在于治愈癌症

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei表示，要争取对 AI 持怀疑态度的公众，最好的方式就是兑现此前的宏大承诺。

在周六罕见地于 X 发帖时，Anthropic CEO 承认了公众对 AI 的不信任，并表示，行业只有拿出切实的科学突破，才能改变这种状况。

Amodei 写道：“到了这个阶段，说 AI 会治愈癌症，与其说是鼓舞人心，不如说更像一句陈词滥调，而且大多数人会认为这具有误导性。对包括 Anthropic 在内的 AI 公司的最准确批评是，我们尚未兑现那些造福世界的重大承诺。”

他补充道：“真正有效的方法，就是实际治愈癌症。”

AI 行业正面临日益强烈的公众反弹：它在全国各地社区建设庞大的数据中心，抓取通常受版权保护的在线数据来训练模型，并颠覆许多行业的劳动力市场。皮尤研究中心近期的一项研究发现，约半数美国人认为，AI 在日常生活中日益普及令他们感到“担忧多于兴奋”。

与此同时，Amodei 曾多次在播客、文章以及 Anthropic 博客文章中警告 AI 快速发展带来的风险。在 6 月的一篇文章中，Amodei 写道，该公司的新 Mythos 模型对网络安全、金融行业、关键基础设施和国家安全构成“非常真实的风险”。去年，他曾警告 AI 将导致一半的入门级工作岗位消失。

一些其他 AI 领导者则批评了 Amodei 所代表的这类言论。Amodei 因担忧 OpenAI 对安全问题的重视程度而于 2020 年离开该公司。Google DeepMind 的 Demis Hassabis今年早些时候表示，他的同行对悲观预测“过于确定”，并敦促他们降低这种论调的强度。

随着 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 为预计将进行的 IPO 做准备，两家公司已经采纳了这一建议，从“末日论”转向“繁荣论”。不过，Amodei 在周六的 X 帖文中表示，他并不认为自己的警告是公众不信任 AI 的原因。

他写道：“我不同意我的表达方式存在不成比例的负面倾向。”

他补充道：“我写《Machines of Loving Grace》，是因为我觉得 AI 行业没有描绘出足够鼓舞人心的图景，来说明这项技术如何能够从根本上让世界变得更好。”他所指的是一篇篇幅很长的 2024 年博客文章，其中阐述了他认为 AI 能够如何改善世界。

相反，Amodei 表示，公众对 AI 公司的不信任，反映的是美国人整体上对企业日益广泛的怀疑。他写道：“其原因可以追溯到数十年前，AI 只是这种现象的最新迭代。”

Anthropic 出于谨慎考虑，决定不将其任何前沿模型开源；这一决定至少在一定程度上加剧了公众的警惕。上个月，在华盛顿考虑对部分中国模型实施限制之际，Anthropic 因成为唯一未签署支持开放权重 AI 联名信的主要 AI 开发商而招致批评。

Meta 前首席 AI 科学家 Yann LeCun 长期认为，像 Anthropic 这样将前沿 AI 技术维持闭源的做法，比其他任何因素都更会加剧公众对 AI 的不信任。

在一则回应 Amodei 的 X 帖文中，LeCun 写道，唯一的“前进道路”是让 AI “广泛可用、可共享且开放”。

他写道：“我们需要多样化的 AI，正如我们需要多样化的媒体一样。”

至于 Amodei 关于重大科学突破能够扭转公众舆论的观点，也并非所有人都认同。

OpenAI 应用 AI 架构师 Angel Brodin 在回复 Amodei 帖文时写道，尽管制药行业持续在公共卫生领域实现进展，但它“仍然是最不受信任的行业之一”。

她写道：“人们也不会仅仅根据突破来评价 AI 公司。他们还会根据定价、访问权、游说活动、不透明性、经济收益如何分配、谁能够参与并获得其利益，以及最终谁掌握权力来评价这些公司。”

Amodei 则表示，Anthropic 正在加快生物和医学领域的工作，以检验这一理论。

他写道：“我们希望在未来几年取得令人难以置信的成果，并在未来数月看到一些早期曙光。当我们真正完成了某件实实在在的事情，全世界都会以尽可能响亮的方式听到它；关于这一点，我向你保证。”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the best way to win over AI skeptics is to deliver on the hype.

In a rare post on X on Saturday, Anthropic's CEO acknowledged the public's mistrust of AI and said the industry can only change that by delivering tangible scientific breakthroughs.

"At this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is more a cliché than it is inspiring, and most people think it is deceptive," Amodei wrote. "The most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven't yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world."

"The thing that will work is actually curing cancer," he added.

The AI industry is facing a growing public backlash as it builds huge data centers in communities across the country, scrapes often copyrighted online data to train its models, and upends the workforce for many industries. A recent Pew Research Center study found that about half of Americans felt the increased prevalence of AI in their daily lives made them feel "more concerned than excited."

Amodei, meanwhile, has repeatedly warned on podcasts, in essays, and in Anthropic blog posts, about the dangers posed by AI's rapid development. In a June essay, Amodei wrote that the company's new Mythos models present "very real risks" to cybersecurity, the financial sector, critical infrastructure, and national security. Last year, he warned that AI would cause half of all entry-level jobs to vanish.

Some other AI leaders have criticized the kind of rhetoric for which Amodei, who left OpenAI in 2020 over concerns about the company's attention to safety, has become famous. Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis said earlier this year that his peers had been "way too certain" about their dire predictions and encouraged them to dial it back.

As OpenAI and Anthropic gear up for expected IPOs, they have followed that advice, pivoting from doomerism to boomerism. Amodei, however, said in his Saturday X post that he doesn't think his warnings are the cause of the public's distrust of AI.

"I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative," he wrote.

"I wrote Machines of Loving Grace because I didn't feel the AI industry was painting an inspiring enough picture of how the technology could radically transform the world for the better," he added, referring to a lengthy 2024 blog post in which he laid out how he thought AI could make the world a better place.

Instead, Amodei said that the public's distrust of AI companies reflects broader skepticism among Americans toward corporations overall. "The causes of this go back decades and AI is just the latest iteration of it," he wrote.

Anthropic's decision not to open-source any of its frontier models, which it says is out of caution, has contributed, at least in part, to the public's wariness. Anthropic drew ire last month for being the only major AI developer not to sign a letter advocating for open-weight AI as Washington considered restrictions on some Chinese models.

Yann LeCun, the former chief AI scientist at Meta, has long argued that keeping frontier AI technology closed-source, as Anthropic does, contributes to public distrust about AI more than anything else.

In an X post responding to Amodei, LeCun wrote that the "only way forward" is for AI to be "widely available, shared, and open."

"We need diverse AIs for the same reason we need a diverse press," he wrote.

As for Amodei's argument that a major scientific breakthrough could turn the tide of public opinion, not everyone agreed with that either.

Angel Brodin, an applied AI architect at OpenAI, wrote in a response to Amodei's post that despite routinely delivering advancements in public health, the pharmaceutical industry is "still one of the least trusted industries."

"People also won't judge AI companies solely by their breakthroughs," she wrote. "They'll judge them by pricing, access, lobbying, opacity, how the economic gains are distributed, who gets to participate in its benefits, and who ultimately holds the power."

Amodei, for his part, said Anthropic is ramping up work in the biological and medical fields to test that theory.

"We hope to have incredible results in the coming years and some early glimmers in the coming months," he wrote. "When we've actually accomplished something real, the whole world will hear about it, as loudly as possible, you have my word on that."