Anthropic Co-Founder Backs Mandatory AI Kill Switch — SkimNews
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- Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, told the BBC a third-party-verifiable AI "kill switch" may eventually need to be mandatory, though he noted most labs — including Anthropic — already have ways to "pull the plug."
- Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, called over the weekend for AI development to slow "without sacrificing commercial advantage," prompting some to question his motives.
- Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger said he personally put the probability of human extinction from AI at ">10% within the next decade," a figure Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton told the BBC was "not unreasonable."
- US lawmakers have introduced the Kill Switch Act, which would require shutdown mechanisms and let certain government agencies demand tools be turned off or limited.
- President Donald Trump dismissed AI existential fears on social media as a "HOAX" and compared them to the "Global Warming Scam of not so long ago."
- The UK government rejected the kill switch idea, with a spokesperson saying it "would not prevent them being developed or misused elsewhere."
- Anthropic, valued at $965bn, is preparing for an IPO, while OpenAI (valued at $852bn) will not IPO this year, per CEO Sam Altman, citing the AI safety debate.
Why it matters: The call moves the debate from voluntary lab practices to enforceable law: the US Kill Switch Act creates a concrete legislative path, but Trump's dismissal of AI risks as a "HOAX" makes federal action unlikely. Anthropic's $965bn and OpenAI's $852bn valuations, per the source, are explicitly tied by critics to the "take over every industry" narrative — meaning the safety debate itself now shapes trillion-dollar IPO timing.
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