Anthropic's Jack Clark calls for 'common sense' AI standards among leading nations

Anthropic co-founder and head of policy Jack Clark used a panel at the IMF and World Bank's annual meetings in Bangkok to argue for what he called common sense standards for artificial intelligence, shared among the small group of countries actually building frontier AI systems.

Speaking on a panel examining AI's relationship to the global economy, Clark framed sensible, practical regulation less as a constraint on innovation and more as a precondition for broader economic gains, arguing that clearer standards would build confidence in the technology among businesses, governments and the public still wary of adopting it at scale.

The remarks reflect a position Anthropic has staked out repeatedly: that AI developers themselves have a stake in seeing credible guardrails put in place, rather than leaving the field to a patchwork of inconsistent national rules or, alternatively, to no meaningful oversight at all. That stance has put Anthropic somewhat apart from parts of the industry more resistant to formal regulation, even as the company continues to compete aggressively on frontier model development.

Clark did not lay out a detailed regulatory blueprint in his remarks, but the call for standards specifically among AI-producing nations points to an approach focused on the handful of countries, led by the US and China, whose policy choices actually shape how the technology is built and deployed, rather than a broader multilateral framework spanning every government with an interest in AI.

The comments come as global discussions about AI governance remain fragmented, with different countries and blocs pursuing their own regulatory tracks and little consensus yet on shared technical or safety standards that would apply across borders.