Jack Clark, co-founder of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, has warned that AI is approaching a point where it could develop without any human input – and that the industry currently has no way to slow it down. In an interview with BBC Newsnight, Clark said: "You want the option to be able to take your foot off the gas and put your foot on the brake. Right now, it's like the AI industry has a gas pedal, but it doesn't have a brake pedal."
Clark stressed that people, acting through government policy, must retain control of AI systems, which will only become more powerful and have wider impacts on society. "The world needs to do some thinking and we need to eventually develop some new regulations that allow us to be confident in these systems," he said.
“Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark warns AI could soon develop without humans and calls for a 'brake pedal'.”
The urgency of his warning is underlined by the rapid advance of Anthropic's own technology. Its popular chatbot Claude already runs on code that is 80% written by the system itself. Clark said reaching 100% could happen within two years and "would have huge implications".
Drawing a historical parallel, Clark compared the current AI boom to the oil boom of the early 20th century. "Society's response was to come up with a sensible policy and regulatory framework that gave people confidence in oil and the benefits that oil could provide to the world, and meant that you didn't have to worry about the personalities of the people leading the companies," he said. "That's clearly where we end up here."
Yet despite this call for regulation, Anthropic this week welcomed an executive order on AI from US President Donald Trump that was relatively hands-off. The order did not require AI companies to submit to safety testing by the government, a process that remains voluntary. And major AI firms, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, have not said they will pause their own research.
Anthropic itself has grown so rapidly since its founding five years ago that it is preparing to debut on the public stock market. It is poised to be one of the first public listings by a newer AI firm and among the most valuable in history, with private investors estimating Anthropic's valuation at nearly $1tn (£745bn).
Clark insisted that his motivation for publicly discussing AI's growing capability is not to burnish Anthropic's reputation with paying customers. He simply wants to "tell the world what we're seeing inside these companies with this unusual technology".
Since its founding by chief executive Dario Amodei, Clark and a handful of other executives, Anthropic has positioned itself as outspoken about the potential risks of AI, even engaging in a public dispute with unnamed parties. The question now is whether the industry will heed its own co-founder's call for a brake before the technology accelerates beyond human control.