Anthropic’s ‘anti-China’ stance triggers exit of star AI researcher

A star Chinese artificial intelligence researcher has left Anthropic to join a rival company, citing the American AI start-up’s “anti-China statements” as a key reason for his departure.

Yao Shunyu, according to a post on his website on Monday, left Anthropic after less than a year to join Google DeepMind, partly because of his “strong” opposition to the start-up’s characterisation of China as an “adversarial nation” and its broader rhetoric.

Anthropic labelled China as so last month when it began barring subsidiaries of Chinese companies anywhere in the world from accessing its services.

“Although, to be clear, I believe most of the people at Anthropic disagree with such a [characterisation], I don’t think there is a way for me to stay,” Yao wrote.

According to his resume, Yao earned a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from Stanford University. He did his undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University, where he earned the presidential award and the Yeh Chi-Sun prize, the highest awards for undergraduates at the elite Chinese institution.