Anthropic's Co-Founder and Top Economist on Doing Research at the AI Frontier
6/19/20261 hr 6 min
There’s a lot to unpack with AI right now — everything from its potential impacts on the labor market and society to more extreme questions about existential risk. Anthropic, which builds frontier models like Mythos, Fable, and Claude, is actively grappling with these issues, including whether governments should limit AI development. Just last week, the Trump administration forced Anthropic to block foreign access to its two leading models. In this episode, we speak with Jack Clark (co-founder and head of public benefit) and Peter McCrory (head economist) about how Anthropic approaches safety and economic risks. We talk about its preparations for recursive self-improvement, the engineers it's hiring now, and why Jack left Bloomberg to enter the early AI industry.
Read more:
Anthropic Lays Out Vision for How to Bolster AI Models’ Safety
Microsoft Makes Big AI Inroads in China by Selling OpenAI Models
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First 90 secondsJennifer Zabasajja0:00
A new chapter in global growth is being written, and much of it is happening in Africa.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:05
Africans need to invest.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:06
There are deals to be done and business to be won.
Jennifer Zabasajja0:09
I'm Jennifer Zabasajja. Every week on the Next Africa podcast, we track capital flows and political shifts shaping the continent's future.
Jack Clark· Guest0:17
The digitalization of Africa is gonna power its growth.
Jennifer Zabasajja0:20
Ridding the world of something like HIV is possible.
Speaker 50:22
Population growth is so enormous in Africa.
Jennifer Zabasajja0:25
Listen to Next Africa on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. [upbeat music] Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:37
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:53
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:54
Tracy, I don't know, I think our listeners like it, but, uh, you know, a lot of our episodes are about AI these days.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:59
Yes.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:59
But to be fair to us, it's a pretty big topic.
Tracy Alloway· Host1:02
[laughs] That's all anyone wants to talk about. [laughs] Whenever we go to dinners- Yeah ... with sources and things- Yeah ... and people who are not even directly in the tech industry, you know, they might be in markets- Yeah ... they might be in policy and economics, all they wanna talk about is AI. And then inevitably, the conversation veers into very sci-fi-y territory- Yeah ... where we all start talking about the human extinction scenario.
Joe Weisenthal· Host1:21
Yeah.
Tracy Alloway· Host1:21
And that's just the norm nowadays.
Joe Weisenthal· Host1:23
I know, it's so weird. You know, we were in Hong Kong recently, and when we were in Hong Kong, this was before it was announced