A hot potato: Dario Amodei has never been Nvidia's biggest fan, and it's a feeling that's pretty much mutual. The Anthropic CEO is particularly against the US government allowing Team Green's H200 chips to be sold to China, a move he says is "a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea."
The Trump administration formalized the 25% duty on Nvidia's H200 and AMD's MI325X chips shipped to China last week, creating a new revenue stream for the US government.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Amodei was asked about the recent events. The CEO said that while the H200 accelerator isn't Nvidia's latest-generation model, he still believes it was a "big mistake" to ship the chips as they are an improvement over what China can currently access.
"I think this is crazy. I think it's a bit like, I don't know, like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging, oh yeah, Boeing made the case," Amodei said.
Amodei might be worrying about nothing. There have been reports that Chinese customs officials have blocked shipments of H200 from entering the country and warned domestic firms not to buy them unless absolutely necessary.
The rivalry between Amodei and Nvidia (and Jensen Huang) is turning into a modern version of the Steve Jobs vs. Microsoft/Bill Gates drama of yesteryear.
Anthropic clashed with Team Green over the export of its chips to China in May last year when it supported the AI Diffusion policy. The Amazon-backed company suggested lowering the export threshold for Tier 2 countries, implementing stricter regulations to minimize smuggling risks, and boosting funding for enforcement efforts.
Anthropic cited the arrest of two people in 2023 by Hong Kong customs officers who were trying to smuggle 70 high-end "computer display cards" into the country alongside 617 pounds of lobsters, and the famous incident in which a woman was caught entering China with 202 Intel CPUs wrapped around her torso and concealed underneath a prosthetic pregnant belly.
Nvidia responded with, "American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in 'baby bumps' or 'alongside live lobsters.'"
Huang also took offense to Amodei's warning that AI could wipe out about half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years. "One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it," Huang said of Amodei.
"Two, [he believes] that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it […] And three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it," Huang continued.
More recently, Huang appeared to reference Amodei during his complaint about public AI negativity. He said no company should ask governments for more AI regulation.
"Their intentions are clearly deeply conflicted, and their intentions are clearly not completely in the best interest of society," he said. "I mean, they're obviously CEOs, they're obviously companies, and obviously they're advocating for themselves."