AI war heats up: China rejects calls to curb tech, blasts 'fearmongering' Anthropic

NEW: China rejects calls to slow AI development, blasting Anthropic's warnings as 'fearmongering' after the bosses of OpenAI, Anthropic and others urged the industry to put safety ahead of profits.

China just called the AI safety movement fearmongering, by name.

Beijing rejected calls to slow down artificial intelligence development, and it singled out Anthropic, the lab whose boss Dario Amodei kicked all this off by warning the industry is building too fast. You'll remember Sam Altman of OpenAI and other big names lined up behind that warning, urging everyone to put safety ahead of profits. China's answer, in effect, was no thanks, and stop scaring people.

Here's why that lands hard. The whole safety argument depends on everyone pausing together. If the second-biggest AI power says it's not slowing, the labs in San Francisco face an ugly choice, hold back and watch Beijing pull ahead, or keep racing and admit the safety talk was just talk.

The people who build this technology asked for a pause. The country best placed to exploit one just said no.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.