Anthropic Company Tightens Its Technological Restrictions to Exclude Chinese Entities for the Protection of U.S. National Security
The American startup "Anthropic" in the field of artificial intelligence has imposed new restrictions limiting access to the services and products it offers to any company owned by China or where Chinese entities hold a majority stake, in a move described by the company as aimed at "preventing a rival to the United States from advancing in the field of artificial intelligence and threatening U.S. national security".
This announcement came in a statement from the company based in San Francisco, where it clarified that it will expand the scope of the restrictions it already imposes on "authoritarian" systems to include the operations of these entities abroad as well.
"Anthropic" justified its decision in a blog post published on Friday, noting that Chinese entities "could exploit our capabilities to develop applications and services that ultimately serve hostile military and intelligence services and broader authoritarian goals". It added: "Such systems could use the company's electronic models to develop their own artificial intelligence technologies and compete globally with trusted companies in the United States and allied countries".
This decision comes alongside the support of Dario Amodei, the company's president, for imposing technological sanctions on China, especially following the announcement of the advanced artificial intelligence model launched by the Chinese company "Deep Tech" earlier this year, which surprised the American technology industry.
Although "Anthropic" did not explicitly name the companies that would be included in the restrictions, the decision clearly targets major Chinese companies such as the "Alibaba Group" and "ByteDance", which have joined "Deep Tech" in a frantic race to innovate artificial intelligence applications capable of competing with leading American companies like "OpenAI".
It is noteworthy that "Anthropic", which has a market value of $183 billion and is the developer of the famous artificial intelligence model "Claude", is taking this step at a time when concerns are rising among U.S. policymakers about China's direction to employ artificial intelligence technologies in developing advanced military applications, such as autonomous drones and smart weapon systems, which are believed to be capable of transforming the course of military industries worldwide.
