Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei clarifies that the company has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models, rejecting recent reports suggesting otherwise. He argues that protectionist measures would fail to address national security concerns regarding authoritarian regimes gaining military superiority through AI.
Amodei outlines three specific policy interventions he supports: restricting the sale of powerful chips and chipmaking equipment to China, cracking down on industrial-scale distillation operations, and implementing mandatory safety testing for all sufficiently capable models regardless of their openness.
He critiques an open letter supporting open-weights by arguing that broad access may increase risks from cyberattacks or biological misuse due to attacker-defender asymmetry. Instead of bans, he emphasizes the need for global cooperation on safety testing and hardware controls to mitigate these threats.