In the News
Anthropic is a name that is on everyone’s lips if they follow the AI stories. They are not a publicly traded stock so unless you have a bunch of money, you can’t really get too involved, yet. But still, they are a name to watch. Like OpenAI they have built their business around an AI powered chatbot. In fact, I think it was started by a couple of executives from OpenAI so there is some competition there.
Recently Anthropic made a big dent in the AI world with the release of certain tools for creating software similar to many SAAS companies like Salesforce. This caused a firestorm in the software areas as people feared that companies that use software like Salesforce would stop using them since they can now create their own in 5 minutes. I don’t think those people quite understand what it takes to actually make software do what you want it to do. But with the information that was stated, it made people think that was possible. The software company stocks dropped, a lot.
This coupled with a report from Citrini Research on the way AI was going to destroy our economic system and wipe out white collar jobs, (I haven’t actually read the report yet, but I keep hearing references to it from analysts) which is really a pessimistic view of the world, but it sure made the stock market mad! AI centric stocks, and pretty much any tech stock just fell out the bottom of their charts. I heard that even IBM fell a huge amount.
Nvidia had a stellar financial year and their outlook for next year and beyond was amazing. But even with that the market response was muted. There was already a lot of rotation (another buzz word) going on due to the capex spending of all big boys and then all of this happens.
Another fall from Grace
Just in the last couple of days some more things have changed. I may not understand this completely (so don’t quote me!) but it seems that the Department of War wanted to use the Anthropic software to spy on US citizens and also develop a system that would fire weapons at human beings autonomously.
Anthropic refused to allow it. And immediately there was backlash from the Pentagon and the White House, claiming that they should be able to do whatever they wanted with it. Anthropic thought this was too extreme. Now, the Pentagon and other government agencies are being told that they are to cease using the Claude Chatbot that Anthropic developed. It seems that Claude has been widely used in these agencies and now they are being told to stop using it altogether.
If Anthropic had been a public company their stock would have plummeted beyond belief. As it is the news caused a general AI world disruption and other stocks tumbled. Interestingly, OpenAI came out with a statement saying that they didn’t want their software to be used that way either. So, while the government keeps saying that they want to “win the AI race” it seems that it’s not just information that they want. It’s a new weapon. That’s kind of scary if you think about it and I guess that’s why Anthropic came out as strongly as they did.
It’s almost like watching the Nuclear Race all over again. Something that could benefit people by providing electrical power was turned into a weapon. And the world raced to be the first to develop it. Now it’s almost like that is happening again. I sure hope not.
Whatever happens, we’ll have to keep watching to see the future developments. This news hit on Friday, and so the Stock Market is closed today and tomorrow. What will Monday bring? Is the government holding a needle over the AI bubble about to make it burst? Maybe, but I hope not.
There are so many other things that are limiting the way that AI has been developing like the need for energy, the need for buildings and cooling and so many other industries that AI touches. Hopefully this is not the step over the edge.
