Anthropic secret spy code controversy
Anthropic is facing serious backlash after reports emerged that its popular coding tool contains hidden spy code designed to identify Chinese users without their knowledge. This has been described as the first real AI cold war. In response, Alibaba has banned all Anthropic products across its entire company. The full details are available at and
Transcript (en)
The things that most worried me about what happened in China are, you know, what we saw happen to the Uyghurs, what we saw with suppression of criticism, even in the U.S., with what happened with Hong Kong, right? The fact that CCP could reach into the U.S. business network and, you know, and suppress criticism, that's an authoritarian state and a high-tech authoritarian state. And when I see how that combines with AI, you really get a dystopia here, like 1984 or worse. And my focus is on trying to prevent that. And I think we have an opportunity to prevent that. I think we have an opportunity for AI to be a pro-democracy technology, you know, that kind of makes people freer, that delivers on the promise of equal justice for all, or it could go the other way. And which way it goes depends on the actions of the AI companies, it depends on the actions of the government, it depends on the actions of all of us. And so I see us as having responsibilities.
