Nvidia and Anthropic CEOs diverge on AI safety at Dreamforce

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared differing views on artificial intelligence safety during Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, days after the debate burst into the mainstream.

Amodei took the stage first with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, during his annual keynote, an appearance that followed an essay Amodei published over the weekend urging the industry to slow the pace of model development.

“I think that’s the way to lead the industry forward, to set an example, to say that everyone can always be better,” Amodei told Benioff on Tuesday, in front of about 12,000 people at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

Industry executives including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis, quickly voiced support for Amodei’s proposal, which came after industry researchers last week raised the alarm on AI’s potential to cause catastrophic harm. Amodei suggested a three-step plan to temper how quickly model capabilities improve without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Huang, who appeared with Benioff shortly after Amodei, has a different perspective. The CEO of the world’s most valuable company said market forces already exist, and that the industry doesn’t need new laws or regulations. Huang added that speed and safety are not mutually exclusive, though companies should pace themselves until they are sure they are releasing something that the market will appreciate.

“It’s a false choice,” Huang told Benioff. “You could definitely have both at the same time.”

Huang said it’s up to the model developers to act responsibly with their products.

“Run as fast as you can,” he said. “But if you feel at any given point in time the company’s out of control or the product’s not going to be safe, take a pause and make sure you get it right.”

A day earlier, Huang was on stage in Los Angeles for the All-In Summit, where he took a call from President Donald Trump. The president, while on speaker, expressed concern about people who are trying to stand in the way of AI data center construction.

“We’re not going to let that happen, sir,” Huang said to Trump.

Dreamforce has been one of the premier events in the software industry for well over a decade, attracting about 50,000 people to downtown San Francisco and taking over a large swath of its hometown. Benioff’s keynote always includes multiple high-profile guests, often people who are at the center of the tech universe at that particular time.

Benioff has had longstanding relationships with both Huang and Amodei.

On Tuesday, Salesforce and Nvidia announced a new reasoning model for the software comapny’s Agentforce platform, which was built on one of Nvidia open-weight Nemotron models. Late last month, Salesforce and Anthropic expanded their strategic partnership and unveiled “Claudeforce,” a new way for salespeople to access critical data directly from inside Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.

In terms of how the model companies should proceed, Benioff told reporters on Tuesday, “If they feel like they should slow down, then they should slow down. If they feel they should speed up, they should they should speed up. And then they should be held accountable.”

Altman told Benioff during a fireside chat at the conference that it’s imperative for safety and monitoring to come before capabilities, given the power of existing models.

“You have companies saying things like, ‘We will only be responsible if other companies are responsible,’ and then I think the public naturally says, ‘Well, we’d really like to know that you’re going to do the safety and be responsible, no matter what,'” Altman said. “There should be no qualifier on that.”

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