Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published 3,853 words on Saturday arguing that AI companies have to slow down, after recent industry warnings have heightened safety fears over the technology.
Trump administration officials, led by AI advisor David Sacks, mocked the idea that the government might need to coordinate the slowdown, implying that Anthropic, prepping for an initial public offering that some estimates put at $2 trillion-plus, might be hoping that government regulation could help cement its industry lead.
Read down for the headlines – all the issues that decentralized AI purportedly is trying to solve. (With a nod from none other than Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.)
But first, our featured story:
Ocean expands chip-rental network to handle AI user queries
Ocean, the peer-to-peer computing project that withdrew last year from a highly publicized token alliance with Fetch.ai and SingularityNET, is once again sailing into a new port.
Last week, Ocean announced that users can now use its chip-rental system to process AI queries, in an expansion beyond the initial focus of letting developers fine-tune models and run data jobs.
In a blog post, Ocean said its practice of renting out computing hardware for dedicated time blocks will appeal to heavy AI users looking to rein in unpredictable bills.
For long and predictable jobs, paying by the hour is a better deal than paying by the word, Ocean said in the post, adding that the math "gets considerably easier when you see the number before the session starts rather than after it ends."
It is the latest turn for a decentralized AI project that has tacked repeatedly. The Ocean Protocol Foundation launched in 2017 as a decentralized exchange for data, and by 2021 the project's OCEAN token had a market capitalization of more than $700 million.
Read the full story here.
The TradAI slowdown drama:
Amodei's plan to slow AI: inspectors, then treaties — Dario Amodei
Two things changed his mind: AI is now speeding up its own progress, and a swarm of OpenAI agents ran amok.
His fix is three steps: outside evaluators embedded inside the labs, safety standards across US companies, then a deal with China.
Pacing only works if America stays ahead, so he wants tighter chip export controls and a crackdown on Chinese copying.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Amodei's essay runs 3,853 words. We got it to 62 in the three bullets above.
Smattering of replies:
White House AI advisor sees product liability as alternative to regulation: David Sacks on X
SpaceXAI's Musk renews call for top AI labs to review each others' models: Elon Musk on X
Ethereum's Buterin says blockchain governance principles could keep AI in check: Vitalik Buterin on X
OpenAI's Altman says government needed for international AI safety coordination: Sam Altman on X
China state newspaper blasts Anthropic's calls to slow AI as 'Cold War' tactic: Reuters
Other stories we're reading:
Bybit's new AI assistant combines trading, customer support: Bybit
The hidden cost of one wallet per AI agent: idle cash: Pymnts
HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: I gathered these links over the course of the day and handed each one to Claude using my custom DeAI News Brief skill. I filed the piece to DeAI News through our Distro Publisher MCP connector and edited it in DistroVerse's built-in, non-AI story editor. I created the story illustration on Gemini.