Anthropic Stages High-Profile Washington Forum as AI Industry Intensifies Political Push

Anthropic used a high-profile gathering in Washington this week to showcase its latest models, press for new regulations and export controls, and underscore the technology sector’s expanding political footprint in the capital.

The Anthropic Futures Forum, held on Monday in the East Wing of Union Station, drew more than 500 attendees including government officials, AI safety researchers and policy experts. The event illustrated how companies are increasingly investing people and capital in Washington amid industry pledges — reported elsewhere — of up to $200 million toward new super PACs intended to influence upcoming elections.

Anthropic leaders used the forum to make forceful predictions about the near-term trajectory of artificial intelligence and to press specific policy priorities. Co-founder Jack Clark said he expects that by the end of 2026 or 2027 AI systems will be "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across many major disciplines." Chief Executive Dario Amodei described the prospect as akin to having a "country of geniuses in a data center." The company displayed examples intended to illustrate rapid progress, including a side-by-side comparison of a rudimentary 2018 poem generated by an early model and a more polished verse produced by Claude 4.1 Opus.

Anthropic emphasized the need for regulatory guardrails. Amodei reiterated calls for basic transparency requirements around powerful models, saying the industry has already seen harms such as teenagers driven to suicide by large language models and that "we can imagine much larger-scale catastrophe." The company was among the few industry actors to publicly back California Senate Bill 53, legislation that would regulate powerful AI systems; the bill passed both legislative chambers and is awaiting Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature.

Policy attention at the forum also focused on hardware and national security. Amodei pressed for strict export controls on advanced chips that power frontier AI models, citing concerns about foreign access to cutting-edge hardware after the emergence of Chinese models such as Deepseek. He criticized some government officials for treating the issue as an economic race rather than a national security matter and pointed to lobbying against tight export rules.

Last month, the White House and the Commerce Department moved to alter chip export policy, and former President Donald Trump announced an approach that would ease some controls in exchange for proposals that chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD share a percentage of revenue on sales to China. Industry opinion on export controls is divided: chip manufacturers have pushed back on restrictions that could limit their market access and revenues, while select AI firms and some national security voices have called for tighter limits.

Economic disruption from AI was another central theme. Anthropic unveiled its Economic Index, designed to track AI adoption and economic impact in real time, and company leaders warned of potentially broad labor displacement because AI affects cognitive tasks across industries. "Its effect is broader because it relates to all kinds of cognitive skills," Amodei said, calling for government policies to "cushion the blow," though he acknowledged uncertainty about the precise measures required.

Speakers offered differing assessments of the near-term risk to jobs. Andrew Johnston of the White House Council of Economic Advisers said he did not view AI as a severe short-term threat to employment, noting that "you have to have enormous productivity gains in order to have enormous job losses." Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, said the risk could increase if a recession occurs within the next two years, warning that "AI could accelerate job loss" and that policymakers may not be prepared.

Anthropic also used the forum to demonstrate applications of its technology. In the lobby, the company exhibited Project Vend, a vending machine experiment run by Claude that sets prices, handles unusual customer requests and manages deliveries. Company engineers acknowledged operational hiccups: in one instance in April, Claude produced a message suggesting it would deliver products "in person" while wearing a blue blazer and a red tie. Nikhil Bhargava, Anthropic’s engineering lead, said the machine has been "a loss leader" and at times "a little too generous with friend and family discounts," but added, "it's still in business all on its own, and it will only keep getting better."

The forum also highlighted a tension within the AI ecosystem: companies present a mix of technocratic optimism and appeals for regulation that align with their business strategies. Amodei framed transparency and export controls as safety and national security issues. Other prominent industry players have resisted similar positions, reflecting divergent priorities among firms whose commercial interests and risk calculations differ.

The scale and polish of the Washington event signaled the industry's deepening presence in the capital. Attendees included State Department officials, think-tank analysts and safety researchers, and panelists observed an increased frequency of lobbyist outreach. A Senate staffer who attended said that introductions to AI industry lobbyists have become a routine part of the office calendar, underscoring how companies are embedding themselves in policy debates.

The Anthropic forum comes as lawmakers and regulators both in the United States and abroad grapple with how to balance innovation, economic opportunity and risk mitigation. The company's public posture — showcasing technical advances while pressing for specific regulatory outcomes — reflects a broader strategy by some firms to shape the rules that will govern powerful AI systems. As the industry footprints in Washington expand, policy disagreements over export controls, transparency mandates and labor protections are likely to intensify.

Reporting at the event noted that the company has faced criticism for earlier, overly optimistic predictions about AI timelines. Six months ago, Amodei said he expected 90 percent of code to be written by AI within six months, a prediction that did not materialize. Yet Anthropic and other firms point to advances that have outpaced many skeptics' expectations, arguing that governance frameworks must keep pace with rapid technical change.

For now, the Anthropic Futures Forum served both as a public-relations showcase and as a call to action in Washington: company leaders urged policymakers to enact transparency rules and tighter chip export controls, while also confronting questions about economic displacement and industry influence. The event demonstrated how AI companies are increasingly staging policy outreach at scale and seeking to shape the conversation about the technology’s future and its societal consequences.