| Here are three takeaways from those discussions: 1. Disagreements over AI policy are embroiled in social, cultural and philosophical differences between AI safety and the anti-regulation crowd. “It’s hard for me to look at the movement and not see a, as Pascal said, a God-shaped hole in their hearts that has been filled with the AGI machine gun,” said Sankar, referring to a French philosopher’s notion that all humans are always seeking something reflecting God to fill an inner spiritual emptiness. Indeed, some executives in the AI industry, such as Sankar, have said that safety views expressed by AI researchers are more religious in tone than grounded in scientific or technological reality. This became apparent after the New York Times published a report on Tuesday detailing that an Anthropic co-founder,Christopher Olah, and his team had tried to get religious scholars and advisers to the pope to seriously consider that AI models are conscious — and should be conferred a similar “moral status” as a person. “I am increasingly concerned about the AI psychosis inside Anthropic,” said Neal Khosla, the co-founder and CEO of Curai Health, in response to the report on social media. Sankar went on to say that he’s suspicious of the coalition that formed around resigned Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon to push for new regulation. “It’s like somehow system engineering doesn’t apply at all in this discipline,” Sankar said. “I think the other thing you should really consider when you weigh this is[that] fear around [extinction] risk and AI killing us all predates the technology. It’s kind of been a movement in search of a reality.” 2. Countries around the world are desperate to build their own AI capacity — and believe that their economic and geopolitical futures hinge on getting a piece of the AI supply chain. “I think the high-level takeaway is everyone recognizes that the global economy is in the middle of a major technological revolution, and everyone wants to be a part of it,” said Helberg. “Because everyone wants to be a part of it, everyone is trying to find their place in the AI supply chain.” Helberg compared the moment we’re in to the “Great Divergence” during the Industrial Revolution, when European powers surged ahead of other nation-states. Helberg said that AI economies are currently seeing between 2 and 4 percent growth — which could lead those economies to look “totally different” than economies that don’t embrace AI in two decades. 3. AI technology and semiconductors create new leverage and power dynamics in international relations. Helberg fielded a question from FAI General Counsel Tim Hwang about reporting from the Wall Street Journal that U.S. negotiators had used promise of access to Nvidia chips for an Armenian data center to broker an Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal in 2025. Helberg responded that it was an example of how international orders need an “industrial foundation” — and that the idea is at the core of the new “Pax Silica” initiative launched by the State Department in December to secure global AI supply chains. “It was very significant that Qatar and Israel both co-signed on to the Pax Silica Declaration, which, to my knowledge, is the only document that they have co-signed, certainly in recent history,” Helberg said. “I think it really shows that shared supply chains can actually be more binding than shared ideologies.” | 
