Anthropic Policy Chief Says Winning Ai Race Key For Safety

Anthropic’s policy chief Sarah Heck said Wednesday that the U.S. can’t make artificial intelligence safer if it falls behind China in the global tech race.

"The United States needs to stay in the lead on AI, and you can't do safety from second place," the head of public policy said at POLITICO’s Decoded summit in Washington, echoing an argument often made by President Donald Trump and his advisers.

Heck's comments made the case for export controls on the sale of AI chips to China. She repeatedly defended Anthropic as having a long history of being motivated by safety concerns and said it’s focused on working with lawmakers to pass new regulations for the technology.

“We do think it's existential to do this. We do think we have to balance the risk now,” Heck said. “The capabilities are only increasing and increasing at a pace that is accelerating.”

And while Republican leaders in Congress have so far relied on self-regulation by the AI to address catastrophic risk, Heck argued that is insufficient.

“I don't think that there's a world where you do safety and people are accepting of AI companies just doing it on honor code. We can't be checking our own homework,” she said.

But Heck declined to endorse on the spot a bipartisan House plan that would require top AI companies to embed outside evaluators to ensure their models are safe, even as she insisted the company has “always been for third-party evaluators.” OpenAI’s top lobbyist Chris Lehane told reporters the day before that it backs the key provision, part of the FRONTIER Act from Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.).

“We're working with Congressman Obernolte and the many others on figuring out what makes the most sense,” Heck said.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the development of frontier AI models on Saturday, earning quick endorsements from leaders at rival AI labs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpacexAI’s Elon Musk. It came just days after Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon set off a firestormby resigning and warning that AI companies are “gambling with our lives.”

Amodei’s proposal also elicited a rebuke from Trump, who accused him of pretending to be a “perfect little angel” and rejected the need for additional AI guardrails on Truth Social Monday.

Progressive Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said earlier at the summit that he met with Heck on Tuesday morning and urged Anthropic to pause development of their most advanced AI models.

“This isn't a pause on all AI, it’s a pause on the most dangerous kind of R&D,” he said.