Anthropic urges AI development ‘pause’ and conversation about risks

US firm says it will convene policymakers, in post detailing progress of its Claude model towards ‘recursive self-improvement’

Anthropic has floated the idea of a worldwide “temporary pause” on AI development – and said it was going to convene “policymakers” to discuss the dangers of advanced AI – in its latest release touting the capabilities of its products.

In a long post on Thursday, Anthropic detailed the progress of its AI model, Claude, towards “recursive self-improvement” – that is, being able to make better and more powerful versions of itself. Recursive self-improvement is a bugbear of AI safety researchers, viewed as the key step for AI to become superintelligent and therefore unleash widespread consequences on humanity.