Vannaccismo artificiale

Case in point: the Trump administration’s warnings to Anthropic over the weekend that no foreigners, including foreign employees of Anthropic, could access its latest AI models without permission.

While that warning is aimed specifically at Anthropic—now in a standoff with the government over its latest AI models—other AI firms are worried about the precedent it sets. As we scooped today, OpenAI executives wrote to staff on Saturday that it had told the administration building AI “requires the best talent from around the world.” (See our latest OpenAI scoop, on its first quarter financials, here).

The administration undoubtedly has legitimate security concerns about the number of foreigners working on AI models in the U.S. (As we have written, a lot of AI researchers in the U.S. are foreign born.) But this is also an administration that has not been exactly friendly to immigrants. That makes it difficult to parse what exactly is driving this push to block foreigners from working on AI models. 

What is clear, however, is how it could set back AI development, which is OpenAI’s point. If the U.S. wants to lead in AI—or any industry for that matter—it has to encourage the best foreign talent to come here. Doing anything else would be self-defeating.