Anthropic warns of catastrophic risk to humanity ahead of IPO

Anthropic warned that advanced artificial intelligence systems could pose “catastrophic or existential” risks to humanity if they are developed or operated without appropriate safeguards, oversight and security. The warning appears in documents for its planned US stock listing, which is set to take place on the Nasdaq under the symbol ANT; the company has not disclosed the offering’s date, price or number of shares. Anthropic expects a valuation higher than SpaceX’s and reported $16.3bn in revenue in the first half of the year, alongside losses of more than $80.7bn. The company also outlined regulatory, operational and security risks while saying AI could accelerate progress in fields including biology and medicine. The owners of Elvis Presley’s music rights have also sued Anthropic, accusing it of using hundreds of songs to train Claude.