Anthropic fires AI researcher for anti-Chinese views

After less than a year, renowned physicist-turned-AI researcher Yao Shunyu left Anthropic for Google, citing in a blog post that the startup's description of China as a "adversarial nation" was one of the reasons he left. The specifics: During his year at Anthropic, Yao worked on Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 4 before leaving in mid-September. Anthropic's policy prohibiting subsidiaries from "adversarial nations like China" from obtaining services was cited by the researcher as the reason for 40% of his choice. Yao wrote that although his experience at Anthropic was worthwhile, "it is better without you." He also mentioned other "undisclosed internal matters." Yao joined DeepMind's Gemini team as a senior research scientist, purportedly to work on the company's main foundation models. Individual researchers navigating their careers are also impacted by the geopolitical dynamics in AI development, in addition to nations and labs. This year's AI talent conflicts focused mostly on pay and computation, but company positions on global collaboration might prove to be equally significant.