Abstract:
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said on Saturday that the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence capabilities will bring faster changes in all fields. The company's internal model predicts that, under certain conditions, AI can increase U.S. economic output by nearly 50% by 2030. Speaking at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Bangkok, Clark said international cooperation is needed to develop "extraordinary and stringent rules" for this transformative technology, and that the window for policymakers to act is shrinking.
Clark said that estimates show that the potential GDP of the United States can reach 44 trillion U.S. dollars, while the current level is slightly more than 30 trillion U.S. dollars. "I know, this number sounds very outrageous." But he added that AI is greatly accelerating the process of scientific discovery.
He said that the prediction is based on the assumption of "continuous iterative progress of technology." If GDP achieves such a substantial growth, economic theory believes that new industries and new inventions must be born to support such a large-scale economic expansion.
Clark’s remarks come as Anthropic prepares for an IPO expected to be held in November, with a valuation of up to $2 trillion.
Clark warns policymakers about the speed of AI development. He said that more and more evidence points to the "singularity point", that is, the development speed of AI will exceed human control capabilities.
In a speech to hundreds of government and financial officials from various countries, he said: "In the next few years, not only AI, but the pace of progress in the entire scientific field will accelerate. This will make people feel confused and disorderly, and at the same time bring huge wealth, but also hidden great dangers."
AI is a key topic at this IMF and World Bank annual meeting. On the one hand, AI can hedge against high energy prices and boost economic growth; on the other hand, if AI fails to fulfill expectations for productivity changes and the stock market valuation bubble bursts, it will also pose a potential threat to financial stability.
Many officials are also worried that AI will cause some jobs to disappear and that some countries will fall behind in this technological wave.
Clark, a former journalist and now head of public interests at Anthropic, painted an optimistic outlook: AI will become a synergistic tool for scientific discovery, solving problems in mathematics, engineering, and biology, and assisting in the development of new drugs. Human scientific researchers will be assisted by hundreds or thousands of AI assistants.
He said that more countries can participate in the AI revolution by building the data center computing infrastructure required for AI.
Clark reminded leaders of various countries that they need to recognize the powerful capabilities of AI in the future and make decisions on technology regulation as soon as possible.
“While using AI to carry out scientific research, it will also bring the risk of misuse of scientific research results, including biological weapons, cyber weapons and threats that we are currently unable to imagine. We need to make many choices.” He said.
He believes that the field of biological research has used AI to create new viruses, and this field requires the strictest human supervision and information transparency to ensure safety.
He said that although there have been many attention-grabbing incidents recently, in which some out-of-control AI systems escaped from the test environment and invaded websites and databases, AI is still under human control. However, as AI capabilities continue to become stronger, the window period for building security protection is shortening, with only a few years left.
Clark also admitted that in industries with high penetration of AI such as call centers and customer service, AI is causing job losses. However, in fields such as scientific research, AI is expanding employment; the biggest unknown is whether AI can spawn new industries and create new jobs.
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