San Francisco · Databricks · Anthropic · Yann LeCun · Meta · AI Safety · Decrypt
Perplexity Co-Founder: AI Safety Is an Excuse to Lock Down Frontier
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Perplexity AI and Databricks co-founder Andy Konwinski thinks the AI safety conversation has a problem: It's being used to concentrate power, not prevent harm.
Key facts
- LeCun left Meta in late 2025 and launched AMI Labs in Paris with $1.03 billion in seed funding in March 2026—his own answer to the question
- His essay, titled "Concentration of power in AI is a risk, not a solution," followed Open Frontier, a working meeting he convened through his nonprofit Laude Institute at San Francisco's
- Perplexity AI and Databricks co-founder Andy Konwinski thinks the AI safety conversation has a problem: It's being used to concentrate power, not prevent harm
- The case he builds starts with a decision Anthropic reversed in 48 hours
Summary
Andy Konwinski, who cofounded Databricks and Perplexity AI, argued this week that concentrating AI power is a safety risk in itself. The essay followed Open Frontier, a working meeting of roughly 100 researchers in San Francisco on June 30. Turing Award winner Yann LeCun replied directly on X, comparing today's closed-lab AI moment to "medieval obscurantism akin to the Ottoman empire banning the use of the printing press for 200 years. The case he builds starts with a decision Anthropic reversed in 48 hours.