Anthropic is battling Uncle Sam for control of superpowered AI
Anthropic 正在与美国政府争夺超级 AI 的控制权
The struggle may end up denting its astonishing commercial success
这场斗争最终可能会损害其惊人的商业成功
THE PARADOX of religious authority is that, to believers, there is nothing more important, yet spiritual leaders typically wield little practical power. Indeed, it is often the refusal to sully themselves with the quandaries and compromises of everyday life that confers moral authority on holy men. That, in turn, makes it both easy for worldly leaders to subdue them in the short run, they have no weapons, and difficult in the longer term, their persecution only increases their moral standing.宗教权威的悖论在于：对信徒来说，没有什么比它更重要，但精神领袖通常几乎没有实际权力。事实上，正是他们拒绝让自己被日常生活中的困境和妥协玷污，才赋予了圣人道德权威。反过来，这也使世俗领袖在短期内很容易压制他们，因为他们没有武器；但从长期看又很难真正压服他们，因为迫害只会提升他们的道德地位。This dynamic, although familiar to medieval prelates and princes, may not be as well understood by Dario Amodei, the supreme pontiff of Anthropic, one of America’s leading artificial-intelligence firms, and Donald Trump, America’s imperious president. In recent days, for the second time in four months, underlings of Mr Trump have interfered peremptorily in the running of Anthropic. They ordered it to prevent any non-Americans, including those on its own staff, from accessing its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, on grounds of national security.这种动态虽然对中世纪的高级神职人员和王公贵族来说很熟悉，但 Anthropic 的“最高教皇” Dario Amodei，以及美国威严强势的总统 Donald Trump，可能并没有那么理解。Anthropic 是美国领先的人工智能公司之一。最近，四个月内第二次，Trump 的下属以强硬方式干预 Anthropic 的运营。他们以国家安全为由，命令该公司阻止任何非美国人访问其最新模型 Fable 5 和 Mythos 5，甚至包括公司内部的非美国籍员工。Whereas the Trump administration sees AI as a potent tool to strengthen America’s position in the world, Anthropic sees it as a force too powerful to be conferred without safeguards on impetuous laypeople. The result is a titanic clash between church and state—one which not only threatens to interfere with Anthropic’s blockbuster IPO, but which will also determine who has ultimate control over the world’s mightiest technology.Trump 政府把 AI 视为增强美国全球地位的强大工具，而 Anthropic 则认为，AI 是一种过于强大的力量，不能在没有安全防护的情况下交给冲动的世俗之人。结果就是一场“教会与国家”之间的巨大冲突。这场冲突不仅可能干扰 Anthropic 的重磅 IPO，也将决定谁最终控制世界上最强大的技术。Anthropic’s headquarters in San Francisco have a monastic feel. Employees are on a mission to create AI so powerful that insiders liken their task to the mystery of creation. Much of their talk is about ethics and values. When Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical on AI last month, “Magnifica humanitas”, a co-founder of Anthropic was at his side. Mr Amodei, meanwhile, writes frequent encyclicals of his own on how to build AI safely and responsibly. Like the pope’s, they dwell on the risks—but they also address the rewards. His latest, “Policy on the AI Exponential”, was published on June 10th. It urged the American government to move quickly to establish “serious and binding regulation” of AI.Anthropic 位于旧金山的总部带有一种修道院气息。员工们肩负使命，要创造出强大到让内部人士把这项任务比作“创世之谜”的 AI。他们谈论最多的是伦理和价值观。上个月，教皇 Leo XIV 发布关于 AI 的通谕《Magnifica humanitas》时，Anthropic 的一位联合创始人就在他身边。与此同时，Amodei 也经常撰写自己的“通谕”，讨论如何安全且负责任地构建 AI。和教皇的通谕一样，他的文章详述风险，但也谈到回报。他最新一篇《Policy on the AI Exponential》发表于 6 月 10 日，敦促美国政府迅速建立“严肃且具有约束力的监管”。
Superpowered simony
超级能力的买卖圣职
This piety has not hindered Anthropic’s business—far from it. The firm was founded only in 2021, shortly after Mr Amodei, his sister Daniela and six others left OpenAI, then the leading AI lab, convinced that it was not serious enough about safety. For more than two years, Anthropic was in OpenAI’s shadow. Although it released its own chatbot, Claude, shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT, it was OpenAI’s offering that won most attention.这种虔诚并没有妨碍 Anthropic 的生意，恰恰相反。该公司直到 2021 年才成立。当时，Amodei、他的妹妹 Daniela 以及另外六人离开了当时领先的 AI 实验室 OpenAI，因为他们认为 OpenAI 对安全问题不够认真。在两年多时间里，Anthropic 一直活在 OpenAI 的阴影下。虽然它在 OpenAI 发布 ChatGPT 后不久也推出了自己的聊天机器人 Claude，但获得最多关注的仍是 OpenAI 的产品。Anthropic’s slow start forced it to focus, however. Rather than doubling down on chatbots, which have many non-paying users and require subscriptions or advertising to make profits, it took a narrower bet on corporate customers. Whereas OpenAI dabbled in lots of consumer products, Anthropic concentrated on creating business tools, such as coding assistants, that generated more durable income and have become good enough to be able to do much of the work of improving themselves.不过，Anthropic 的慢起步反而迫使它更加专注。它没有继续加码聊天机器人，因为聊天机器人有大量不付费用户，需要靠订阅或广告盈利。相反，它押注范围更窄的企业客户。OpenAI 涉足许多消费者产品，而 Anthropic 则集中开发商业工具，比如编程助手。这些工具能够产生更持久的收入，而且已经变得足够强大，可以承担许多改进自身的工作。It has been a winning wager. Software developers have flocked to Claude Code, Anthropic’s year-old coding agent, because it is capable of tasks that would take human coders hours, or days, and its work can easily be checked. Business customers like Anthropic’s emphasis on safeguards, which tallies with their concerns about rogue AI. Its focus on coding enabled its models to get an early lead on competitors such as OpenAI and Google on benchmarks measuring software-engineering capabilities. Its coding prowess, requiring step-by-step reasoning and tool use, gives it an advantage in creating AI agents to work alongside humans.事实证明，这是一场成功的押注。软件开发者纷纷涌向 Claude Code，也就是 Anthropic 推出已有一年的编程智能体，因为它能完成原本需要人类程序员花费数小时甚至数天的任务，而且它的成果很容易被检查。企业客户喜欢 Anthropic 对安全防护的强调，这与他们对失控 AI 的担忧相吻合。对编程的专注，使其模型在衡量软件工程能力的基准测试中，早早领先 OpenAI 和 Google 等竞争对手。编程能力需要一步步推理和工具使用，这也让它在创造能与人类协同工作的 AI 智能体方面具备优势。OpenAI has pivoted towards coding this year, and its latest models are considered as good as Anthropic’s on some tasks. It, too, stands to benefit from the same agentic tailwinds. But four-fifths of Anthropic’s revenue comes from business customers. At OpenAI, business clients generate only about 40% of income. That difference gives Anthropic a greater ability to make money.OpenAI 今年也转向编程领域，其最新模型在某些任务上被认为与 Anthropic 的模型同样出色。OpenAI 也有望受益于同样的智能体浪潮。但 Anthropic 五分之四的收入来自企业客户，而 OpenAI 的企业客户只贡献约 40% 收入。这一区别让 Anthropic 拥有更强的赚钱能力。This month both Anthropic and OpenAI filed for IPOs. Each is likely to be valued at around $1trn. Inevitably, their relative performance is being closely scrutinised. Neither has yet made the paperwork for its listing public, so details of their accounts are sketchy. But Anthropic is getting the better of most comparisons.本月，Anthropic 和 OpenAI 都提交了 IPO 申请。两家公司估值都可能达到约 1 万亿美元。不可避免地，它们的相对表现正受到密切审视。目前两家公司都还没有公开上市文件，因此财务细节仍然模糊。但在大多数比较中，Anthropic 占据上风。Because the two firms are both young and fast-growing, they measure their notional annual turnover by multiplying the figure for the most recent month by 12—a number called annual recurring revenue, ARR. Futurum, a tech-research firm, notes that Anthropic accounts differently for sales through cloud-computing partners, which may flatter its figures. Nonetheless, the trend is unmistakable. Anthropic’s ARR has raced past OpenAI’s. Anthropic’s valuation, too, has surpassed OpenAI’s, reaching $965bn in May, compared with OpenAI’s $852bn in March. Anthropic has told investors it will generate an operating profit in the second quarter, which would make it the first AI lab to do so, according to Futurum.由于这两家公司都很年轻且增长迅速，它们用最近一个月收入乘以 12 来衡量名义年度收入，这个数字称为年度经常性收入，即 ARR。科技研究公司 Futurum 指出，Anthropic 对通过云计算合作伙伴产生的销售收入采用不同会计处理方式，这可能美化了它的数据。尽管如此，趋势非常清楚。Anthropic 的 ARR 已经快速超过 OpenAI。Anthropic 的估值也已超过 OpenAI，5 月达到 9650 亿美元，而 OpenAI 3 月估值为 8520 亿美元。Anthropic 告诉投资者，它将在第二季度实现经营利润；Futurum 称，如果做到这一点，它将成为第一家实现经营利润的 AI 实验室。There are other signs of strength. For all the talk of an AI bubble, Anthropic’s most recent valuation, at just over 20 times ARR, should be judged in the context of recurring revenues that grew fivefold in the past five months. “It is not necessarily cheap but at these growth rates it is not insane,” says Harrison Rolfes of PitchBook, a data-gatherer. OpenAI is more richly valued. The recent IPO of SpaceX valued it at more than 90 times revenues.还有其他强势迹象。尽管外界不断谈论 AI 泡沫，但 Anthropic 最新估值只是略高于 ARR 的 20 倍，而这应该放在其经常性收入过去五个月增长五倍的背景下看。数据公司 PitchBook 的 Harrison Rolfes 表示：“它不一定便宜，但以这样的增长速度来看，并不疯狂。”OpenAI 的估值则更高。最近 SpaceX 的 IPO 估值超过其收入的 90 倍。But Anthropic’s lead is not insurmountable. OpenAI is reportedly considering launching a price war, dramatically cutting what it charges per token, the chunks of data processed by AI, in response to concerns from businesses that they are spending too much on AI. Although the price of tokens is already falling, Anthropic’s latest models use more tokens per inquiry. Anthropic’s pricing power means it did not need to offer a commensurate discount, raising the price of each request. This may have helped fuel its revenue growth.但 Anthropic 的领先并非不可逾越。据报道，OpenAI 正考虑发动价格战，大幅降低每个 token 的收费。token 是 AI 处理的数据块。此举是为了回应企业对 AI 支出过高的担忧。虽然 token 价格已经在下降，但 Anthropic 的最新模型每次查询使用更多 token。Anthropic 的定价能力意味着它不必提供相应折扣，从而提高每次请求的价格。这可能帮助推动了其收入增长。More generally, AI models are at risk of commoditisation because rival firms tend to catch up with each other quickly. That requires model-makers to expand into other domains, especially through the use of agents. Anthropic has been the main source of concerns in the software-as-a-service industry that AI labs will supplant SaaS companies providing tools for things like procurement and personnel management. That would not only give it a much stronger relationship with its customers, but also gain it access to more data that could be used to improve its models’ performance at such tasks. OpenAI has its eye on the same prize, as does Google, whose enterprise-software products are already deeply embedded in many firms. But for now, at least, Anthropic’s business focus gives it an edge.更广泛地说，AI 模型面临商品化风险，因为竞争对手往往很快追上彼此。这要求模型制造商扩展到其他领域，尤其是通过智能体实现扩张。Anthropic 是软件即服务行业担忧的主要来源之一：许多人担心 AI 实验室将取代那些提供采购、人事管理等工具的 SaaS 公司。这不仅会让 Anthropic 与客户建立更强关系，还能让它获得更多数据，用来提升模型在这些任务上的表现。OpenAI 也盯着同一个目标，Google 也是如此，因为 Google 的企业软件产品已经深深嵌入许多公司。但至少目前，Anthropic 对企业业务的专注让它拥有优势。All the while, Mr Amodei continues to preach about the risks of AI—literally. Every two weeks or so, he delivers hour-long talks to Anthropic’s 3,000 employees. The firm’s day-to-day operations are led by Ms Amodei; she too shares her brother’s convictions about the importance of AI safety. Further down the ranks, the determination to be the first firm to create artificial general intelligence, AGI, or superhuman AI, runs deep. AI researchers at other firms note how “AGI-pilled” Anthropic’s employees are, despite the conviction among many of them that its advent will put them out of work.与此同时，Amodei 继续宣讲 AI 风险，而且几乎是字面意义上的“布道”。大约每两周，他都会向 Anthropic 的 3000 名员工发表一小时演讲。公司的日常运营由 Amodei 的妹妹 Daniela 领导；她也和哥哥一样坚信 AI 安全的重要性。在公司更基层，成为首个创造通用人工智能 AGI，也就是超人类 AI 的公司，这种决心非常深。其他公司的 AI 研究人员注意到，Anthropic 员工是多么“AGI 入脑”，尽管他们中许多人相信 AGI 的到来会让自己失业。It may have been all the hand-wringing about the potential downsides of AI that initially irked the Trump administration. Officials have blamed the “doomer industrial complex” at Anthropic for what they see as excessive regulation of the technology during the administration of Joe Biden, some members of which have since joined the firm. For much of Mr Trump’s term, the government has taken a dim view of attempts to slow down AI, focusing instead on staying ahead of China. Last year, while some of Anthropic’s rivals, such as OpenAI, openly embraced Mr Trump’s “accelerationist” approach, Mr Amodei was among the loudest voices calling for more regulation at the state and federal level.最初惹恼 Trump 政府的，可能正是 Anthropic 对 AI 潜在负面影响的种种忧虑。政府官员指责 Anthropic 的“末日论工业复合体”，认为它推动了 Joe Biden 政府时期对 AI 技术的过度监管，而 Biden 政府的一些成员后来加入了 Anthropic。在 Trump 任期的大部分时间里，政府都不赞成放慢 AI 发展的尝试，而是专注于保持对中国的领先。去年，当 Anthropic 的一些竞争对手，比如 OpenAI，公开拥抱 Trump 的“加速主义”路线时，Amodei 却是在州和联邦层面呼吁加强监管的最响亮声音之一。That did not go down well. David Sacks, an adviser to the government on AI, accused Anthropic of running a “sophisticated regulatory-capture strategy based on fearmongering”. Other officials noted the irony of warning about AI while building ever more capable models.这并没有得到政府方面的好感。政府 AI 顾问 David Sacks 指责 Anthropic 正在实施一种“基于恐吓的复杂监管俘获策略”。其他官员则指出，一边警告 AI 风险，一边构建越来越强大的模型，这本身充满讽刺。
Turbulent priest
动荡的神父
At any rate, it was Anthropic’s tendency to highlight the dangers of AI that seems to have led to its first public falling-out with the Trump administration, in late February. The firm and the Department of War got into a public row about the use of Claude to power mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The firm said that existing laws were not adequate to regulate the use of AI for mass surveillance and that AI was not reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous killing machines. The Pentagon suggested that Mr Amodei was trying to put himself in charge of matters of national security. In the end Mr Trump sought to compel all government agencies to sever ties with Anthropic, whose leaders he denounced as “leftwing nut jobs”.无论如何，Anthropic 总是强调 AI 危险，这似乎导致了它与 Trump 政府在 2 月底第一次公开决裂。该公司与战争部就 Claude 是否可用于大规模国内监控或自主武器发生公开争执。Anthropic 表示，现行法律不足以监管 AI 用于大规模监控，而且 AI 还不够可靠，不能被用于完全自主的杀人机器。五角大楼暗示，Amodei 试图让自己负责国家安全事务。最终，Trump 试图迫使所有政府机构切断与 Anthropic 的关系，并谴责其领导层是“左翼疯子”。The incident appears to have stoked a fear within the administration that Anthropic is becoming so successful that it may be a threat in itself. Mr Sacks recently warned that if Anthropic’s “exponential” growth continues for long, it could gain “unprecedented control over the most important technology of our time”. He drew an unflattering parallel with John D. Rockefeller’s domination of the oil industry in the 19th century.这起事件似乎加剧了政府内部的一种担忧：Anthropic 正变得如此成功，以至于它本身可能成为威胁。Sacks 最近警告说，如果 Anthropic 的“指数级”增长持续太久，它可能获得“对我们这个时代最重要技术的前所未有控制权”。他还把它与 19 世纪 John D. Rockefeller 对石油行业的垄断作了一个不太友好的类比。In particular, members of the administration have woken up to the massive risks high-powered AI poses to national security. That seems to have been the origin of the latest spat between Anthropic and the authorities. The firm had been co-operating with the government over the release of its first Mythos model, which is superbly good at hacking, among other alarming capabilities, and had found potential vulnerabilities in many government systems. Anthropic allowed a limited number of customers, vetted by the government, to use it. Later it created a version of Mythos called Fable, with special guardrails to prevent abuse, which it distributed more widely.尤其是，政府成员已经意识到高能力 AI 对国家安全构成的巨大风险。这似乎是 Anthropic 与当局最新争端的起源。该公司此前一直在与政府合作发布其首个 Mythos 模型。这个模型在黑客攻击方面极其出色，也具备其他令人警觉的能力，并发现了许多政府系统中的潜在漏洞。Anthropic 允许有限数量、经过政府审查的客户使用该模型。后来，它又创建了一个名为 Fable 的 Mythos 版本，并加入特殊护栏以防滥用，再将其更广泛地分发。Some reports suggest that Anthropic was slow to tell the government when it gave new customers access to Mythos. A source close to Anthropic disputes this, saying it worked closely with the administration, allowing it to raise national-security concerns about any new partners and swiftly cutting off a global telecommunications firm when the government asked it to. In one of many dark insinuations about Anthropic, the Trump administration has whispered that the customer in question had links to China. That may be true, but it is not a sign of hidden sympathies on Anthropic’s part. Few CEOs are as loudly critical of Chinese authoritarianism as Mr Amodei, who has strongly advocated strengthening America’s curbs on AI chip exports to China.一些报道称，Anthropic 在向新客户开放 Mythos 访问权限时，通知政府的速度较慢。接近 Anthropic 的消息人士否认这一点，称公司与政府密切合作，允许政府对任何新合作伙伴提出国家安全担忧，并在政府要求时迅速切断了一家全球电信公司的访问。在许多关于 Anthropic 的阴暗暗示中，Trump 政府私下放话称，相关客户与中国有关。这可能是真的，但并不说明 Anthropic 对中国有什么隐藏同情。很少有 CEO 像 Amodei 那样公开强烈批评中国威权主义；他一直强烈主张加强美国对中国 AI 芯片出口的限制。Matters came to a head after Amazon, the e-commerce giant that is a big investor in Anthropic, told the authorities that it had found security flaws in Fable, enabling it to “jailbreak”, or override the guardrails. Posting on X, Mr Sacks accused Mr Amodei of refusing to “fix the jailbreak”.在电商巨头 Amazon 告诉当局其发现 Fable 存在安全漏洞之后，事情走向爆发点。Amazon 是 Anthropic 的大投资者。这些漏洞使人能够“越狱”，也就是绕过安全护栏。Sacks 在 X 上发文指责 Amodei 拒绝“修复越狱漏洞”。
Confusion at Canossa
卡诺莎的混乱
A source close to Anthropic says there was no refusal. The firm insists it gave the models to the government to probe for flaws weeks before Fable was released. It also disputes how serious the jailbreak was. There is no such thing, it has argued, as completely foolproof security controls for an AI model. Many observers assume that Anthropic was penalised chiefly out of personal animosity. After all, in February the administration accused Mr Amodei of having a “God complex” and Mr Amodei said Anthropic was being persecuted for failing to offer Mr Trump “dictator-style praise”.接近 Anthropic 的消息人士说，并不存在拒绝修复一事。该公司坚持表示，在 Fable 发布前数周，它已经把模型交给政府测试漏洞。它也质疑这次越狱问题到底有多严重。Anthropic 认为，对 AI 模型来说，完全万无一失的安全控制并不存在。许多观察者认为，Anthropic 受到处罚主要出于个人敌意。毕竟，2 月时政府指责 Amodei 有“上帝情结”，而 Amodei 则说 Anthropic 是因为没有向 Trump 提供“独裁者式赞美”而遭到迫害。But underpinning such squabbling is a genuine regulatory conundrum. Having adopted a laissez-faire approach to AI, the Trump administration does not have many straightforward or calibrated ways of imposing its will on AI labs. Adam Thierer of the R Street Institute, a think-tank, says Mythos set off a tussle within the government over whether models had come to pose a sufficient threat to national security to require vetting before release. Hawkish types called for an official say over the release of new models. Some even floated the creation of a dedicated regulatory agency to that end. Instead, earlier this month Mr Trump issued an executive order creating a voluntary framework through which AI labs could work with the government before releasing new models. It is not yet up and running.但支撑这些争吵的，是一个真实的监管难题。Trump 政府对 AI 采取自由放任路线，因此并没有很多直接且经过校准的方式，把自己的意志施加到 AI 实验室身上。智库 R Street Institute 的 Adam Thierer 表示，Mythos 引发了政府内部一场争论：模型是否已经对国家安全构成足够威胁，以至于发布前必须接受审查。鹰派人士主张政府应对新模型发布拥有正式发言权。有些人甚至提出为此建立专门监管机构。相反，Trump 本月早些时候发布行政命令，建立一个自愿框架，让 AI 实验室在发布新模型前与政府合作。该框架尚未真正运行。Without regulations in place, the administration is left with blunt tools. During Anthropic’s row with the Pentagon, officials ended up declaring the firm a “supply-chain risk”, thereby impeding government agencies from doing business with it—a potentially self-defeating stance to take towards America’s leading AI lab. In the ongoing row over Mythos and Fable, the administration is said to have required Anthropic to seek a special export licence for every sale to a foreign entity. Since Anthropic cannot be sure whether foreigners working at American firms, for instance, might be using the models, the company ended up having to shut them down altogether—again, an outcome likely to do America more harm than good. Without clear rules, says Dean Ball, a former Trump administration official at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think-tank, the risk is that America winds up with government “dominance over AI” rather than American “dominance in AI”.在没有现成监管规则的情况下，政府手中只剩下钝器。在 Anthropic 与五角大楼争执期间，官员最终宣布该公司是“供应链风险”，从而阻碍政府机构与其开展业务。对美国领先 AI 实验室采取这种立场，可能反而损害自身利益。在围绕 Mythos 和 Fable 的持续争端中，据称政府要求 Anthropic 对每一笔向外国实体的销售申请特殊出口许可证。由于 Anthropic 无法确定，例如在美国公司工作的外国人是否会使用这些模型，公司最终不得不完全关闭模型。这同样可能对美国弊大于利。智库 Foundation for American Innovation 的前 Trump 政府官员 Dean Ball 表示，如果没有明确规则，美国面临的风险是最终变成政府“支配 AI”，而不是美国“主导 AI”。The tensions are natural. It makes sense for a firm like Anthropic to want to distribute a powerful model as widely as possible. It is good for business because it caters to a burning need, in that criminals are already using AI to make their cyber-attacks more effective. It is equally understandable for the national-security apparatus to want to take charge of such a powerful technology, both for offensive and defensive purposes. “The national-security apparatus is in control mode,” Mr Ball says.这些紧张关系是自然的。像 Anthropic 这样的公司想尽可能广泛地分发强大模型，是有道理的。这对生意有利，因为它满足了迫切需求：犯罪分子已经在使用 AI 提高网络攻击效率。国家安全机构希望控制如此强大的技术，同样可以理解，不论是出于进攻还是防御目的。Ball 说：“国家安全机构正处于控制模式。”The question is how control of the technology will be exercised. Although Mr Amodei sometimes talks in alarmist terms about the risks of AI, his favoured approach is a narrowly technocratic form of regulation. He calls for rules modelled on regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, whereby frontier AI models would be put through standardised technical tests and audits.问题在于，这项技术的控制权将如何行使。虽然 Amodei 有时会以危言耸听的语言谈论 AI 风险，但他偏好的方法是一种狭义技术官僚式监管。他呼吁建立类似联邦航空管理局等监管机构的规则，让前沿 AI 模型接受标准化技术测试和审计。Yet even Mr Amodei acknowledges that, as models become ever more capable, AI will become the “dominant source of military and economic power”. That gives the Trump administration and all its successors a clear and compelling interest in having their own levers to pull, including over Anthropic. As Mr Ball puts it, “No company gets to shake the foundations of state sovereignty while staying blithely above the raw reality of politics.”然而，就连 Amodei 也承认，随着模型能力越来越强，AI 将成为“军事和经济力量的主导来源”。这让 Trump 政府及其所有继任政府，都有明确且强烈的利益，要掌握自己的控制杠杆，包括对 Anthropic 的控制。正如 Ball 所说：“没有任何公司可以动摇国家主权的基础，同时还轻松地凌驾于政治的残酷现实之上。”Both sides hope the row will blow over. It has benefited neither of them. In a capricious attempt to assert its authority, the government has upset people around the world who use Anthropic’s models, as well as showing how short-sighted it was to dismiss the need for rules and regulations on AI in the first place. For its part Anthropic, acting like it knows best rather than bending over backwards to accommodate an antagonistic government, has ended up hamstrung, to the detriment of customers.双方都希望这场争端能够过去。它对双方都没有好处。政府在一次反复无常的权威展示中，激怒了全球使用 Anthropic 模型的人，也显示出它最初轻视 AI 规则和监管需求是多么短视。另一方面，Anthropic 表现得像是自己最懂，而不是尽力迁就一个敌对政府，最终也被束缚住，损害了客户利益。The fallout will hang over Anthropic’s IPO. The suspension of a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people is bound to affect its bottom line. What is more, investors and customers alike will worry about the risk of further such disruption owing to Anthropic’s testy relationship with the authorities.这场风波的后果将笼罩 Anthropic 的 IPO。暂停一个已部署给数亿人的商业模型，必然会影响公司的利润。更重要的是，投资者和客户都会担心，由于 Anthropic 与当局关系紧张，未来还会出现类似中断风险。Ultimately, AI firms, for all the good they may do, are developing dangerous capabilities at a time when the laws to govern them are inadequate. Mr Amodei knows that regulations evolve far more slowly than models, so he finds himself acting as an unelected arbiter of safety. The elected government sees AI as too potent a technology to pass up. The tussle will persist until Congress writes new rules.归根结底，AI 公司无论可能带来多少好处，正在法律尚不足以治理它们的时候，开发危险能力。Amodei 知道，监管演化速度远远慢于模型进步速度，因此他发现自己正在扮演一个未经选举产生的安全仲裁者角色。民选政府则认为，AI 是一种过于强大的技术，不能轻易放手。这场拉锯将持续下去，直到国会制定新规则。全篇重点词汇：peremptorily /pəˈremptərəli/ 强硬地；不容置疑地。in a way that expects immediate obedience and allows no refusal.simony /ˈsɪməni/ 买卖圣职；用金钱换取宗教职位。the buying or selling of religious offices or spiritual privileges.commoditisation /kəˌmɒdɪtaɪˈzeɪʃən/ 商品化；同质化。the process by which a product becomes hard to distinguish from competitors and mainly competes on price.regulatory conundrum /ˌreɡjʊlətəri kəˈnʌndrəm/ 监管难题。a difficult problem involving how something should be governed or controlled.arbiter /ˈɑːbɪtə(r)/ 仲裁者；裁决者。a person or institution with the authority to judge or decide what is acceptable.
夜雨聆风
