David Sacks criticized Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s position on AI regulation, arguing that Amodei did not directly rebut investor Gavin Baker’s account of prior remarks. Sacks rejected Amodei’s characterization of critics as treating all regulation as regulatory capture, saying he supports antitrust enforcement and defining capture through economist George Stigler’s framework of industry-backed rules that primarily benefit industry. Sacks said Anthropic has hired former Biden AI-policy officials, expanded government affairs efforts, and supported aligned organizations advocating its preferred policies. Sacks said Amodei has backed a federal pre-release review system for frontier AI models, previously likened to the FDA, FAA, or FINRA. He argued that such a system would create approval delays, disadvantage the United States against China, and favor well-funded frontier labs such as Anthropic over smaller competitors and open-model developers. Sacks also said Amodei has called open models dangerous, criticized their lack of central monitoring and withdrawal mechanisms, and linked them to intellectual-property theft. He disputed Anthropic’s warnings about AI harms, citing Amodei’s May 2025 prediction that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level knowledge jobs within five years and Anthropic’s televised “blackmail” study. Sacks framed the dispute as whether powerful frontier AI should be centralized or broadly distributed.

1/2 Thanks Gavin for an especially thoughtful exchange. I don't usually spend much time on social media but I wanted to engage here because it really brings out the heart of an important conversation. First, on regulation, I think that “either concentrate it in the hands of a chosen few companies and politicians via regulation or distribute it widely” is a false choice. I know that there’s a sort ...

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