U.S. ban on Anthropic AI models shows world needs to ‘build out and diversify’: Carney

Mark Carney said the U.S. decision to block all foreign access to Anthropic PBC’s latest AI models underscores the risk of relying on just a handful of players. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

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Prime Minister Mark Carney said the U.S. export ban blocking all foreign access to Anthropic PBC’s latest artificial intelligence models underscores the risk of depending on just a handful of powerful AI tools.

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“The situation we’re in collectively right now with Mythos and Fable is something that can happen with over-reliance on certain models,” Carney told reporters Sunday during a visit to Ireland, referring to the AI models’ names.

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“Nobody’s done anything wrong in this situation, but we will have done something wrong if we just accept this, don’t take the lesson, don’t build out and diversify,” he said.

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The message dovetails with Carney’s overriding policy theme of diversification since he became prime minister. That most directly applies to Canada’s huge trading reliance on the U.S., which, under Donald Trump, has imposed large tariffs on key goods such as autos and steel. The U.S. president has also pushed Canada to row back on digital sector taxes affecting Silicon Valley.

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Nonetheless, Carney said there is a “good flow of information” between the Canadian and U.S. governments on AI and “there are some risks that they have identified” with Anthropic’s latest model.

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Carney, who led both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and was formerly a banker at Goldman Sachs Group, also drew an analogy to the 2008 financial crisis and the systemic linkages it exposed between banks.

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“We have similar things in terms of model risk” and so there should be a search for redundancy and diversity, he said.

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AI will be a focus at the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in France in the coming days, and Carney has already discussed the subject with President Emmanuel Macron. The heads of several leading AI firms, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, are slated to attend a G7 lunch meeting on Wednesday.

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“We need to make progress” on AI, he said, but warned that “there will not be a mission accomplished banner that comes out of the G7.”

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