Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei posted a personal blog arguing that AI labs should better pace their releases when there are big leaps, use embedded evaluators that would have editorial freedom and access, coordinate to have common safety standards in democratic nations and put limits on unchecked AI progress. Amodei also said democratic governments should also attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments if possible.

This missive, which apparently has the buy-in from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is the latest chapter of the big American AI freakout. That freakout has only ramped since Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, quit over safety concerns that AI labs are building systems they won't be able to control. In a Wall Street Journal story, Coxon posted a long thread on X about his decision.

A few thoughts:

• Amodei is trying to look like the AI grown-up and get ahead of the regulation backlash to AI (while poking OpenAI in the eye).
• Amodei’s essay spends a good chunk of time on recursive self improvement, which is what makes AI agents dangerous. Well, you could just stop doing recursive self improvement.
• And finally, Amodei forgot something. L-I-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y. If your crazy AI agents jump your sandbox and safeguards and hack me or my company (think OpenAI-Hugging Face incident), I should be able to sue you for damages. It's no different than a rabid dog that hops the fence. These AI agents are your creations and they jumped your safeguards. Liability would end this mess in a hurry or at least lead to better safeguards.

Let’s cue up AC/DC’s Who Made Who.

Who sues who?

Who sues you?