Voorhees Sounds Alarm Over Government Control of AI Knowledge
Crypto figures are sounding the alarm over government control of AI knowledge after Erik Voorhees argued that states should not decide what forms of intelligence are 'safe.' The debate is centered around Anthropic's position on open-weights models, with CEO Dario Amodei pushing back against claims that the company was advocating for a ban.
Voorhees, a longtime Bitcoin advocate and founder of ShapeShift, warned that allowing governments to define acceptable AI knowledge could expand beyond its original purpose. He outlined a hypothetical progression where the government would start by restricting discussion of bioweapons, then move on to dangerous weapons in general, public health, public safety, financial solvency, unapproved encryption, and finally, any AI that obstructs government orders.
The debate is not just limited to Voorhees' comment. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis proposed a federally backed body to test and certify frontier models before release, an idea that OpenAI's Sam Altman called 'thoughtful.' However, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rejected the idea, arguing that it would only add another approval process on top of existing regulators.