Experts polled by “Izvestia” note that in the brief history of the mass market for artificial intelligence (AI) products, there haven’t been instances of direct governmental restriction on access. Vladimir Zykov, editor-in-chief of the IT publication Runet, considers the situation where a commercially released product is shut down at the state’s behest to be truly unprecedented.
He suggested that the case involving Anthropic could serve as a catalyst for tangible actions aimed at bolstering digital sovereignty globally.
Igor Bederov, founder of the company “Internet Rozysk” (part of the “Kibersistema” Group), opines that restricting access to Anthropic’s technologies provides a compelling justification for strengthening digital sovereignty. He firmly believes that Russia must avoid a scenario where its critical infrastructure becomes reliant on a “black box” that could be deactivated from overseas with a single call from the State Department.
Karen Kazaryan, director of the Institute for Internet Studies, believes that a ban on the use of Anthropic’s models outside the US could have significant global repercussions, particularly concerning China’s response. On one hand, Chinese developers are actively closing the gap in AI, even if they haven’t fully caught up yet. On the other hand, there are indications that Beijing aims to limit other nations’ access to its own AI advancements.
Leonid Konik, partner at ComNews Research, commented that while a US government prohibition on exporting cutting-edge AI models should theoretically spark a wave of national AI sovereignty initiatives, only a select few countries will likely achieve this in practice.
He elaborated on the demands, stating, “The resources required for this are immense: scientific personnel, IT specialists, powerful data centers equipped with GPUs, and the electricity to power them.”
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