Anthropic did not call for a pause on AI

Last week, the AI company Anthropic released a blog post titled “When AI builds itself”. This led to a media frenzy, with news outlets around the world publishing headlines that the company was urging a global pause on AI development, or calling for AI non-proliferation.However, the post does not call for a pause. The post warns that the self-improving AIs that Anthropic is developing could “increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems” and says “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development”.Anthropic’s blog post’s language is deliberately vague, underscoring that companies will not lead a slowdown.Just yesterday, OpenAI followed suit with a post co-authored by their CEO, Sam Altman, and Jakub Pachoki, a company executive in charge of recursive self-improvement. This post was met with similar, albeit smaller, reception as the Anthropic post, with some stating that Altman is calling for a slowdown in AI development.Once again, the post in question does not call for a slowdown in AI development. The post contains vague language about the need of international coordination, “One goal of such an organization should be to make it possible for the world to take coordinated action, including slowing frontier development when needed”, echoing the hedging language of Anthropic.This is not an isolated case. It’s a deliberate PR approach that Anthropic and OpenAI have used over and over to curry favor with multiple opposing audiences, while making no concrete commitments.The approach consists of the following:Make vague public statements about risks and benefits: rather than outright dismissing risks, make statements that acknowledge the possibility of multiple risks from the technology the AI companies are building, without committing to any specifics. Vice versa, make statements that mention the possibility of a wide list of benefits, but once again without committing to any specifics. This affords plau