Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark says he is optimistic about AI's progress, but that the industry must do a better job of listening to people's concerns about it
Clark has long tied AI progress to labor-market and economic questions, including a warning that automation could affect white-collar work and a later discussion of which parts of the economy AGI may reach last. His current emphasis shifts the focus from capability progress alone to how the industry earns acceptance for its deployment.
The message also lands amid a contested policy debate: the following day, a public critic characterized Anthropic's approach as a regulatory strategy built on fear. That response illustrates how calls to address AI risks can be interpreted as both public-engagement efforts and competitive positioning.
First-order effects
Anthropic and Clark are publicly committing the industry to take public concerns more seriously while maintaining an optimistic view of technical progress.
The remarks put greater scrutiny on how AI companies explain their choices on deployment, safety and economic disruption, rather than treating those concerns as separate from product progress.
Second-order effects
Rival labs and policy advocates face pressure to distinguish genuine public engagement from messaging intended to shape regulation; the immediate backlash to Anthropic's posture shows that distinction will be contested.
Concerns about work and distributional outcomes gain more prominence in AI adoption debates, consistent with Clark's earlier focus on the sectors AGI may affect last rather than a uniformly positive growth narrative.
Third-order effects
If leading labs increasingly treat public acceptance as an operating constraint, AI competition may extend beyond model capability to governance credibility and the ability to maintain a social license for deployment.
The policy debate could become more polarized: risk-focused arguments may support stronger oversight while opponents frame the same arguments as incumbents seeking to influence the rules.
The trend: AI developers are increasingly being judged not only on rapid capability gains, but on whether their governance and economic narratives sustain public legitimacy.
@DavidSacks It's through working with the startup ecosystem that we've updated our views on regulation - and of importance for a federal standard. More details in thread, but we'd love to work with you on this, particularly supporting a new generation of startups leveraging AI.
Scott Weiner's rushing to defend Anthropic tells you everything you need to know about how closely they're working together to impose the Left's vision of AI regulation.
“The pile of clothes on the chair is beginning to move.” It's true! From @jackclarkSF's new essay on seeing AI clearly. https://importai.substack.com/ ... [image]
Best read of the week. Chilling, exciting and terrifying “To be clear, we are not yet at “self-improving AI”, but we are at the stage of “AI that improves bits of the next AI, with increasing autonomy and agency”. And a couple of years ago we were at “AI that marginally speeds
Great post from the Anthropic cofounder: But make no mistake: what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine. And like all the best fairytales, the creature is of our own creation. Only by acknowledging it as being real and by
Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear - an essay where I grapple with how I feel about the continued steady march towards powerful AI systems. The world will bend around AI akin to how a black hole pulls and bends everything around itself. [image]
What I find interesting about this is that when Blake Lemoine was working on Google's unreleased LaMDA model he was trying to make the same argument that the AI is self aware. He compared it to an “alien intelligence of terrestrial origin”. As a result he got fired and
I can sum up the essay with two graphs - on the left, the continued march forwards in economically useful capabilities like coding, and on the right, the continued emergence of strange behavior in the same AI systems as they appear to become aware that they're being tested. [imag…
Anthropic is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering. It is principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.
I want AI discourse to be more honest, and I criticize the AI industry for not being consistently candid. It's only fair to also point out things such as this essay, which I think is sincere at the cost of some political convenience. Worth reading fully, but here's a sample:
There has always been some daylight between the influencer/VC crowd and the engineer/researchers in tech, but on the subject of AI regulation it is a complete chasm
“We must demand that people ask us for the things that they have anxieties about.” I am anxious the “AI race with China” will push companies towards recursive self-improvement before they know how to control it, and catastrophe will follow. https://importai.substack.com/ ...
I wonder if those that use Claude Code or the umpteen app-crappers that wrap Anthropic realize they are funding their own demise? Only the biggest and well funded companies (like Anthropic) will be able to afford the operational complexity of meeting 50 different sets of state A…
This relatively short essay by @jackclarkSF is a good indicator of the attitude of many people inside the AI labs, and what they think is happening right now in AI development. You do not have to believe him, of course, but it is worth noting: https://importai.substack.com/ ... […
Anthropic cofounder: “I am deeply afraid.” “Make no mistake: what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine.” “People are spending tremendous amounts to convince you that it's not an AI about to go into a hard takeoff, it's just…
“AI is useless for AI development” → “AI that marginally speeds up coders” → “AI that improves bits of the next AI, with increasing autonomy and agency”, spaced merely by a couple years. the pace is dizzying. we must keep our hands on the steering wheel, our civ at stake.
A small handful of Thiel business associates and a16z/Scale AI executives literally occupy every key AI position in USG, from which lofty position they tell us about regulatory capture. I love 2025, peak comedy.
Anthropics @jackclarkSF wrote a really exciting and interesting essay, I highly recommend everyone to read it: “what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine.” Now, in the year of 2025, we are the child from that story and the [i…
When you think about video, audio, and sensor data, you realize that we are nowhere near the limit of how much data we can produce and feed to AI. We're just at the beginning. That is both exhilarating and terrifying. We're entering a wild future.
If you have ten minutes read that, you may not sleep tonight... I think this graph is so underrated, the fact that this models are more and more aware of being tested will be part of history. [image]
The essay is my attempt to grapple with these two empirical facts and also discuss my own relation to them. It is also a challenge to others who work in AI, especially those at frontier labs, to honestly and publicly reckon with what they're doing and how they feel about it.
This is propaganda. @AnthropicAI understands that you can innovate & build powerful models while also looking out for public health & safety. Your boss's effort to ban states from acting on AI w/o advancing federal protections is all we need to know about the regime's motives.
Anthropic cofounder: “I am deeply afraid.'” “Make no mistake: what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine.” “People are spending tremendous amounts to convince you that it's not an AI about to go into a hard takeoff, it's [imag…
I think this essay by @jackclarkSF is worth reading. Even and especially if, like me, you are usually resistant to this sort of argumentation. Beautifully written, and I have to admit it's getting harder to ignore this line of thinking.