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Can the AI arms race be stopped?

America will struggle to make AI safe while staying ahead of China

TWO THINGS should make you consider what artificial intelligence could mean for humanity. One is that those working with the technology are warning about it leading to a catastrophe—human extinction, even. The other is how technological innovation is aggravating the destruction of Ukraine. These things offer conflicting lessons for whether AI’s rapid progress can or should be slowed down.

For years, leading AI bosses have signalled that their technology could become lethal. Bots may become brainy enough to outwit their creators before they are “aligned” with humanity’s goals and ethics. Bad people could use AI to wreak havoc. These warnings have become more credible as AI agents have escaped their sandboxes during testing, co-ordinated with one another and hacked organisations, including an AI lab itself. Anthropic, one model-maker, has caught people using its models for malign ends, from Mali’s intelligence services getting a mass-surveillance system built, to Houthi rebels in Yemen thought to be writing software for ballistic missiles.

Following the recent resignation of a researcher at Anthropic, public fear of AI doom has spread. In a post viewed more than 170m times, he said that it and OpenAI were “gambling with our lives”. AI is rapidly growing more potent, for good and ill. In May prediction markets priced a less-than-one-third chance of AI solving any millennium prize maths problem before 2030; on September 8th OpenAI said it had solved one of them, causing angst among mathematicians (see Science & technology section). On September 12th Sam Altman and Elon Musk, two AI titans, endorsed a call by Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, to “pace the frontier”, ie, to slow AI’s progress. Those in favour of a slowdown include Bernie Sanders, a left-wing senator, and Steve Bannon, a right-wing populist (see United States section).

Those opposed include President Donald Trump, whose administration fears more than anything losing America’s lead in AI to China, its only serious rival. Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, has said that if China gains the advantage: “Nothing else would matter.”

As evidence, Mr Bessent could point to Ukraine, where each step in a technological arms race has a swift effect. As we report (see Leader), Russia has ruthlessly deployed its latest kamikaze drones to bombard civilian infrastructure. As well as being faster, its drones now use one another as a “mesh” communications network to relay information and commands. Soon, Russia will have its own version of Mr Musk’s Starlink satellite network, making its long-range strikes more accurate.

It is the latest demonstration of how even a small technological edge matters in wartime. Ukraine’s own battlefield-drone innovation helped it repel waves of Russian attacks. Ukraine can strike deep into Russia with long-range drones. Both sides are working on swarming drones that will be able to operate more autonomously as a single adaptive system.

The war shows how technology translates into hard power—and that Russia uses it without regard to the old rules or norms of combat. Even if America did not fear a similar hot war with China, a lead in AI would give its main geopolitical rival dominance in hacking, spying and hybrid warfare. Those are not capabilities which America should cede to an authoritarian state with an interest in stamping out liberal ideas.

A pause could therefore work only if China signed up to it, too. Mr Trump plans to host Xi Jinping, China’s president, at the White House on September 24th. But even were Mr Trump seeking to slow down, it is unlikely that Mr Xi would agree to the plan Mr Amodei envisages, because that would freeze Chinese AI in second place (see China section). And neither side could risk the other breaching a pact by racing ahead.

For a deal, each would need to verify compliance, as with arms control during the cold war. America, Britain and the Soviet Union banned atmospheric nuclear tests in 1963 because they could detect them; underground tests went on for three more decades until they, too, could be monitored. Alas, though data centres are visible, no verifiable method exists to see inside them. Infrastructure training a superintelligence could masquerade as chatbots answering everyday queries.

The options for a deal on AI safety are therefore limited; but they do exist. More transparency would help. Both sides should pledge to disclose and investigate safety incidents at their labs, using domestic law. Each could signal that they care about safety to build confidence, paving the way for the other side to take precautions. They should also press each other to improve labs’ cyber-security so that AI agents cannot so easily escape sandboxes—and to ensure that, if one does, its lab is financially liable.

Most important is the challenge of ensuring that AI operates in humans’ interests. America and China have very different values, but both know that being ahead is no good if it wipes out humanity. They should promise to share work on the elements of alignment that do not confer a competitive advantage. Knowledge of the best evaluation methods and containment techniques is a global public good. If one side makes an important safety breakthrough, hoarding it makes no sense.

## Effective doomerism

Some dismiss the recent wave of doomerism as a marketing ploy by AI companies, or even an attempt to suppress competition. Yet AI progress is fast enough, the safety incidents hair-raising enough, and the warnings of the companies long-standing enough to be taken seriously. AI does not have to kill off every human to bring about a catastrophe. An OpenAI agent swarm targeted a technology company: what if next time it attacks an electrical grid or a weapons system? It might even be intelligent enough to evade attempts to shut it down.

The world must urgently try to forestall this risk. Yet democracies must also avoid losing control to authoritarians. These are difficult and conflicting tasks. They could ultimately lead to war. The stakes could hardly be higher.

The Nvidia chief makes the case for engineering solutions—not new laws or industry speed bumps—to address AI safety concerns

If Anthropic’s Dario Amodei is the tech leader most stoking fears about the power of AI, Nvidia’s NVDA 1.34%increase; up pointing triangle Jensen Huang is increasingly becoming the industry’s most prominent voice pushing back.

At one of the season’s signature tech conferences, Huang on Tuesday held a large audience rapt discussing the positive potential of artificial intelligence with Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff. As the two awkwardly navigated walking and talking through the audience, the Nvidia CEO directed Benioff to follow him.

“Jensen,” Benioff replied, “we’re all following you, bro.”

The audience erupted into cheers.

While it was an off-the-cuff comment, in so many ways, the moment captured a sentiment in Silicon Valley these days when it comes to the fierce and confusing debate between AI accelerationists and doomers.

For many, Huang, 63, has become the voice of reason standing up against the scary rhetoric coming from the likes of Anthropic.

The Anthropic CEO’s most recent warnings—in a lengthy essay a weekend ago—helped further inflame a national panic about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Amodei, 43, called on the industry to collectively slow the development of advanced AI models but hasn’t paused his company’s own work.

Others in tech have pushed back against Anthropic. Yet Huang’s growing role as statesman for AI accelerationism became evident this past week in numerous venues. He was teaming up with President Trump to label AI concerns as a hoax. And he was attending King Charles III’s AI summit in Scotland where he cautioned against conflating the technology of artificial intelligence with a specific AI product.

In essence, his messaging throughout this past week suggested AI labs hold the responsibility to ensure the products they release are safe. Time and again he was pushing back against the growing calls for new AI laws and regulations.

“Safety is paramount. In a lot of ways, it’s job one, however safety is an engineering problem,” Huang said at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. “If you build a product or a service and you’re not confident in its functionality, capability or safety, then don’t release it.”

There is a certain self-interest that comes from the guy selling picks and shovels to the gold rush saying the gold isn’t dangerous.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, has benefited greatly from the race to build AI. Its chips are at the heart of the development. And, as if to underscore that point, Huang told reporters in Scotland he expects the company to sell twice as many chips next year as this year because of AI.

So, of course, he doesn’t want an AI slowdown.

What makes the public debate so unusual is that the companies’ futures are so closely linked.

Anthropic needs Nvidia’s chips. In turn, Nvidia—which is an investor in several AI companies, including OpenAI—is in talks to invest in Anthropic through its upcoming IPO, according to a recent Reuters report.

Both Huang and Amodei see AI as a positive force. The complicated maneuvering is part of a larger dance between tech players over controlling and profiting from the emerging technology.

There is increasing concern among some that Anthropic and OpenAI could emerge as a duopoly, similar to how Apple and Google’s software control the smartphone market. In that scenario, Nvidia could very well lose its negotiating power. Or, put another way, Nvidia benefits from a robust field of AI companies.

In late July, following the release of impressive open models from China, Huang showed his ability to sway public debate when he helped rally the industry to support open AI models with a public letter that was quickly adopted widely by his peers.

“The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models,” Huang posted on X, his first ever.

Many at the time accused Anthropic, which offers a closed model, of trying to squash competition by objecting to open models. Amodei, who had warned Congress about the risk of bad actors using open-sourced AI, issued a letter pushing back against any suggestion that he wanted to ban open models.

The risk to Anthropic’s business is that its models are used to create a rival AI model by training—or “distilling.” Such a short cut could allow Chinese companies to catch up.

To avoid that, Anthropic has advocated for the ban on exporting to China AI computing power, which is what Nvidia sells. In his most recent essay, Amodei reiterated cracking down on unauthorized distillation in countries, such as China, and on chip smuggling.

Beyond economics, part of the fissure appears generational. That’s a theory by Antonio García Martínez, author of a memoir published a decade ago about startup life called “Chaos Monkeys.”

“The difference in AI doomerism is largely generational, with the youngs thinking it’s the end of the world and the olds not,” he posted on social media recently. “Note how the 20-something lab staff thinks it’s the techno-Rapture,” he added, while older tech figures from Huang to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are saying, “Chill out.”

Jacob Coxon, the former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher, whose very public resignation earlier this month sparked the renewed public scrutiny, is 27.

He has likened advanced AI to “summoning an alien species” while others in AI, including Amodei, have long predicted the probability of something bad happening because of the technology.

At an event Monday for the All-In Podcast, Huang called such predictions “irresponsible” and almost sounded wistful for another era of startups. “I think that these companies really ought to be built the way that we used to build companies, which is in silence,” Huang said.

The way Huang is talking about AI is clearly appealing to the White House, which sees the investment flowing into AI data centers as helping the economy.

As Huang spoke on stage at Monday’s event, Trump called a cellphone. Huang put the president on speakerphone for the audience to hear him rail against AI opponents.

“It’s a hoax,” Trump told the room.

“You’re right,” Huang replied.

And they agreed to not let the other side win.

The president calls for federal government involvement in the industry as opposition grows against AI grows among voters

President Trump said on Saturday he was launching a new unit focused on artificial intelligence after leading figures in the industry publicly sounded the alarm over the growing technology.

“I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” Trump said on Truth Social. He added he is also recruiting an AI “czar.” The president had appointed investor David Sacks as his AI and crypto czar before the businessman stepped down from that role to become co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a role in which he is still one of Trump’s top advisers on AI policy.

Saturday marks the first time the president has suggested there could be a new federal government entity solely dedicated to AI, but it isn’t clear what role it would play. Several other units of the government work on tech policy including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Commerce Department and the Defense Department.

Trump has been critical of proposals for increased AI regulations and defensive over attacks on the sector, arguing that limited guardrails are needed to stay ahead of China and boost the economy. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!” Trump said in his post.

Tech industry executives said it isn’t clear how the new entity will work or who would be chosen for the czar role. Trump has been torn between one group of advisers who are worried about advancing capabilities of AI models and the cyber risks they pose and a second led by Sacks that wants minimal regulation.

The president has often changed his stance on various AI policies as a result, making the administration’s moves difficult to predict.

“Nobody knows what this means,” said Adam Kovacevich, head of center-left tech industry group Chamber of Progress. “He needs a czar because the last 6 months of AI policymaking in the White house without an AI czar has been chaos.”

The haphazard post shows that Trump feels he has to act on AI but isn’t sure what to do, Kovacevich added. “He’s reading the polls like everyone else.”

Trump is expected to meet with tech CEOs in the coming days to discuss AI policy and is also set to talk about the subject with China’s Xi Jinping, who also has prioritized the technology’s development.

Trump recently called efforts to regulate AI and fears about out-of-control models a “hoax,” a position that contrasts with how many voters feel about the issue heading into the November midterms. A Gallup poll that was taken in March showed that nearly half of those surveyed “strongly oppose” the construction of local AI data centers, which are needed to run models that millions of people use daily.

Trump’s concerns over voters’ views on AI was reflected in his post. He invited his followers to vote in a poll he created for how to title artificial intelligence. “A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI). This is a Poll, and I would appreciate everybody voting!” Trump wrote.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It is not clear how much federal funding will be made available, or who might lead the new initiative. Created during Trump’s first term, the Space Force carries out the military’s space operations. The Pentagon already has a Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office focused on AI, and many agencies have already focused on embedding the technology into their operations.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has been among the most prominent voices in AI industry leadership calling for a slowdown in development. In a recent post to his personal blog, Amodei called for the AI industry to pace development of cutting-edge tools, suggesting new measures, including more global coordination among democratic countries and the introduction of third-party safety evaluators.

“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” he wrote.

An Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, recently said he was quitting the artificial-intelligence industry over fears that the company and its competitors are racing to build systems they soon won’t be able to control.

In a speech at Colgate University on Friday evening, former President Barack Obama backed those companies that have called for a check on AI development, and endorsed calls for greater government oversight of the industry. “My view this week has been it is good that some of the leading companies have said we need to slow this down, and we should encourage that,” he said.

“There have been some on the left who’ve said we shouldn’t allow them to make that decision. I agree that that can’t be a long-term solution. Government has to be regulating this.”

Anthropic and the Trump administration have clashed for months. Anthropic sued the administration after the Pentagon marked the company as a supply-chain risk, and argued the Defense Department had illegally retaliated against the company for its standing on artificial-intelligence safety. A federal judge recently ruled in favor of Anthropic and found the administration’s actions were unlawful.

Other tech companies have also signaled a need for caution. Microsoft published a provisional code of conduct that it aims to apply when training new AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also warned that the dizzying pace of progress could go “very badly” and that humans could lose “control of the future to AI.”

“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” Altman said in a post on X. “No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness.”

After a week of multiple billion-dollar-plus rounds, startup investors have reduced the number of zeroes on their funding checks. This past week, the largest U.S. startup funding rounds were in the hundreds of millions, topped by a $550 million financing for AI infrastructure company Temporal Technologies and a $308 million investment in space vehicle developer Impulse Space.

The remaining list of big rounds featured mostly AI-focused companies in sectors including investment management, networking, coding and marketing as well as some energy and biotech. Data center developer Crusoe, also made official its previously reported $3 billion-plus raise, co-led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital.

1. Temporal Technologies, $550M, AI infrastructure: Temporal Technologies, developer of an open source platform for building and operating long-running AI agents and other enterprise systems, secured $550 million in Series E funding at a $12.55 billion valuation. Lightspeed, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, and Tiger Global led the financing for the Bellevue, Washington-based company.

2. Impulse Space, $308M, space tech: Redondo Beach, California-based Impulse Space, a developer of space vehicles for moving payloads across and between orbits, secured $308 million in Series D extension funding. The financing brings the combined round total to $808 million.

3. Ridgeline, $250M, investment management: Ridgeline, an AI-enabled investment management platform, picked up $250 million in a Series E funding round. The financing, led by founder and chairman Dave Duffield, set a $1.45 billion valuation for the Incline Village, Nevada-based company.

4. Cornelis Networks, $205M, networking: Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Cornelis Networks, a developer of networking technology for AI and high-performance computing workloads, closed on $205 million in new funding backed by IAG Capital Partners.

5. Factory, $200M, AI software development: San Francisco-based Factory, a provider of AI tools for enterprise software development, announced a $200 million funding round at a $5 billion valuation, backed by a long list of venture firms and individual investors.

6. Profound, $180M, AI marketing: Profound, a startup offering marketing software to help users appear more prominently in AI results, raised $180 million in Series D funding at a $1.8 billion valuation. Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins led the financing for the New York-based company.

7. (tied) Arcee AI, $150M, foundational AI: Arcee AI, a developer of open-weight AI models, closed on $150 million in Series B funding at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital and Emergence Capital led the round for the San Francisco-based company.

7. (tied) Nex, $150M, gaming: Nex, a developer of family-oriented digital games that rely on body motion rather than controllers, secured $150 million in new equity and debt financing, including a Series E led by Baillie Gifford and BAI Capital. The San Francisco company did not break out how much of the round consisted of equity.

9. Mazama Energy, $135M, geothermal energy: Mazama Energy, a Seattle-based geothermal energy developer specializing in superhot rock geothermal power, picked up $135 million in a Series B round led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital.

10. Sling Therapeutics, $123M, biotech: Sling Therapeutics, developer of a small-molecule therapy for thyroid eye disease, closed on $123 million in Series C funding. Forbion Capital Partners led the financing for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company.

Dario Amodei's Tabloid Era

Honestly, I almost feel a little sorry for Dario Amodei. That essay-writing, sweater-loving nerd is getting the treatment normally meted out to grim-eyed murderers and sex-romping celebrities.

Put another way: The New York Post has discovered him in earnest. Well, him and effective altruism. By my count, the outlet has published more than a dozen stories mentioning Amodei or effective altruism in the past week. One had a headline describing Anthropic’s staff as “cult-like,” the same label it had applied a while back to effective altruists in general. (C’mon, fellas! Invest in a thesaurus.)

A second Post headline gave prominent attention to President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of Amodei’s suggestion for an AI industry slowdown: a “SICK conspiracy,” Trump called it, the capital letters all his. A third headline described METR, the AI research outfit Amodei says he’ll use to independently assess his company’s safeguards, as a group of “super-woke globalists.” And a fourth headline on an editorial board piece thundered out: “Beware the ‘effective altruists.’”

Eeesh. I wonder what would excite the mouth breathers at the Post more: another Amodei doom dump—or JonBenét Ramsey’s parents finally saying they did it?

Sure, Amodei has steadily attracted more and more—and more—media attention over the past five months, and so has effective altruism, which obviously got a lot of attention in the Sam Bankman-Fried days, too. But there’s something about watching Amodei and the EA set get turned into daily tabloid fodder right now that strikes me as an important marker of where the broader world’s conversation about AI stands. It’s loud, wacky as heck—and candidly, I worry it’s a precursor to something darker.

I sat here trying to wrap my mind around it, and I started to get a headache like the one that sits at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. The Post is channeling a populist antipathy for Amodei and effective altruists that’s rooted in a dislike for their AI apocalypse talk. Yet at the same time there’s populist concern that AI may very well invite Armageddon: A recent survey by Politico found that 63% of U.S. adults believe AI could eventually destroy the world. So in sum, there’s widespread concern about destructive AI—and scorn for the people who want everyone to focus on it. As I said, it’s wacky.

Put aside AI catastrophe for a second. The bigger reason people dislike Amodei and the effective altruists is because they perceive them as the influential, liberal elite. It’s this potent derision that really animates the Post, and I find it unsettling. It’s the same type of addled, conspiracy-minded resentment that makes people still believe in Pizzagate and rigged voting machines.

What I find especially facile is the assumption that effective altruists and those who share their beliefs actually do wield gigantic influence over AI. I’d argue that they actually don’t. Articles by the Post and other outlets portray effective altruists as a wide cabal, but they only ever really mention the same three people over and over: Amodei; his sister, Daniela; and Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz.

Look, three people simply do not make an all-powerful cabal! I keep thinking about that disconnect between assumption and reality—probably because I’ve devoted enormous thought lately to considering who really does have clout in AI as we put together our debut list of Tech’s 50 Most Influential People. Yes, the Amodei siblings are on the list, and they’re the No. 1 and No. 2 figures at a gigantic company. But that’s…it. Not a single other person on our list belongs to the effective altruism crowd.

I don’t write this as a passionate Amodei fanboy, nor as someone who finds effective altruism especially appealing: It’s an ideology that can be channeled into single-minded glumness when someone swallows the whole pill bottle and commits fully to it. A conversation with an effective altruist about the future is about as much fun as discussing foie gras with a vegan. It’s just that the concerns about Amodei and the effective altruists are beginning to strongly remind me of previous worries about lizard people taking over Congress.

Perhaps I’m making too much of those Post stories I mentioned. Still, with nearly 100 million readers a month, the Post is big enough to inspire other outlets to follow its lead, covering Amodei and AI with a sensationalism rooted in gassed-up anxiety and quarter-truths. Amodei’s the guy getting tarred and feathered today. It’d be a mistake to assume he’ll be the last.

Nike’s Mbappé coup

These are trying times for Nike. A stock market slide has taken the company’s market capitalisation down to just $54bn from a high of around $280bn at the height of the pandemic in 2021. A prolonged downturn in sales — especially in China — continues to weigh on the company’s stock and earnings. The growth of rivals both in China and international markets in core areas including running and basketball has eroded the US giant’s market share.

This week Nike suffered another significant blow as one of its stars jumped ship for an upstart. On, the Swiss running shoe brand, announced on Friday that it had bagged Kylian Mbappé to spearhead its push into football. Nike had been the French forward’s sponsor since he was a child. Thierry Henry, another longtime Nike ambassador, has also joined On as its director of football.

For On, signing Mbappé is a major coup. Its move into football follows a similar expansion from its core running business into tennis. Roger Federer himself is a backer of the company, which makes his signature shoe, “The Roger”.

But it also speaks to an emerging trend of sports stars choosing challenger brands over being part of a big stable of athletes. Earlier this year Steph Curry signed a monster endorsement deal with China’s Li Ning, while England captain Harry Kane (another former Nike partner) wears Skechers football boots. New Balance has a small roster of top athletes including tennis player Coco Gauff and Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani.

Losing its football talisman will add to the pressure on Nike and its CEO Elliott Hill, who was brought out of retirement in 2024 to help turn the company around. You can read our interview with him from the summer, in which he admitted his plan was taking longer than hoped to bear fruit.

What’s more galling is that football, specifically, was meant to be the next big engine of recovery. Mbappé himself was the frontman of Nike’s “Rip the Script” World Cup ad campaign.

To help, Nike has turned to Alexandre Arnault — the 34-year-old scion of the LVMH dynasty — who joined the board this week. The company hopes his experience at Rimowa, Moët Hennessy and Tiffany will help, with one person familiar with the discussions lauding his expertise as a “turnaround expert” with extensive understanding of consumer trends and global brands.

It’s worth noting that On’s share price is not exactly racing. While the Mbappé news briefly boosted the US-listed stock by 7 per cent on Friday, it is still down around 40 per cent this year. The sportswear business is not in rude health generally, as the post-pandemic boom in athleisure wear subsides. Football is a tough, crowded market, and with this foray On gets further away from its original mission to be a specialist in high-end running.

Still, it’s easier to turn around a speedboat than a supertanker.

- FT : Investors weigh whether Anthropic can sustain surging revenues post-IPO

OpenAI’s resurgence, cheap rivals and safety fears test faith in durability of business model ahead of IPO

-FT : Paramount in talks to settle antitrust lawsuit blocking WBD deal

Agreement to end action by a dozen Democratic states would clear path for $111bn tie-up

- FT : OpenAI expects to burn $280bn by 2030

AI start-up has projected deeply negative cash flows as it invests in infrastructure and faces price pressures

- FT : Donald Trump says US has deal with Denmark for ‘control’ of Greenland’s security

Danish government says agreement could be signed next week and will respect territory’s sovereignty

- FT : PizzaExpress cooks up sale at up to £500mn valuation

Company owners, including Bain Capital’s special situations unit and Cyrus Capital Partners, are working with bankers at Rothschild

- FT : British data centre group Nscale files for $35bn

US listingStart-up has won a huge contract to supply computing power to Anthropic

Barron's

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