Episode 985: AI Update – Anthropic’s IPO, Pope Leo’s Encyclical and China

Newt talks with Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute about the latest AI news. They discuss Anthropic’s IPO and the current AI investment surge. Chilson maintains it is a genuine boom rather than a speculative bubble, driven by massive datacenter and energy buildouts that are already generating substantial revenue. Their conversation turns to Pope Leo’s 42,000-word encyclical on AI. Chilson praises its emphasis on human flourishing but notes its academic skepticism toward technology and markets and observes that it appears only four years into the AI era, long before the full benefits and risks are known. They discuss China as a “fast follower” pursuing “good enough” AI models powered by abundant energy and released as open source, in contrast to U.S. labs’ focus on proprietary frontier models, and Chilson cautions that China may gain economic and military advantages by rapidly integrating AI across its economy and systems even without surpassing U.S. model quality.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.