I know your comment is about the absurdity of such a thing, and maybe the stupidity of the administration, but for the readers at home:
Fentanyl is actually a very simple molecule. The way it's (and other drugs) production is controlled is by controlling and monitoring the precursor chemicals. So if someone goes out and buys a lot of proprionyl chloride, they will pop up on the DEA's list.
This is a much more sane thing to do than hemming and hawing about how dangerous the AI chatbot is and placing yourself into a position superiority over your users, pretending you know better than them, assuming that you must protect them from certain knowledge for their own good, etc, etc.
And? Computers are dual-use. Cars are dual-use. Telephones are dual-use. Freeze-dried chicken is dual-use.
Single-use, i.e. military only technology is actually pretty rare.
> This kind of posture is simply not tenable as frontier intelligence increases.
I reject the corpo speak that tries to brand these things as being "intelligent." They can be useful. But a language model cannot conjure a weapons platform from the ether no matter how "intelligent" it is.
Having a chatbot that talks to you about synthetic biology or nuclear physics is just not the same as being equipped to develop biological weapons or atomic bombs.
None of this will happen in the "neighbors backyard." You are exaggerating the threats to "democracy" while simultaneously invoking democracy to limit freedom of information. The suggestion that somehow the bad guys will get nukes if we let people access information is just absurd.
Society at large is not concerned about whether someone asks the chatbot about organic chemistry. They are concerned that they will be de-facto forced to interact with some shitty automated system to get by in life, like having to pass an AI-powered ATS to get a job.
They are tired of the hype and tired of idiots like Amodei being elevated to heights of power and influence. They are concerned that the things they love are being devalued. But they don't give a fuck if I ask an AI about genetically modifying viruses. This is a pet issue among some of the AI safety crowd.
So, yes, I am 100% fine with PRC-backed labs distilling Anthropic's models. I do not care about Anthropic. They have demonstrated that they are not on my side, and that they are at best ambivalent about actually empowering their users. I'm not a fan of the PRC either, but their distance makes them far less of a threat to me than companies like Anthropic and my own government.
I think it's more that he is afraid of being misunderstood, and rightly so.
It is also unclear to me how one could find a true scissor statement and know it until one unleashed it and saw the effects. It would just seem obviously true or obviously false.