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Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

nytimes.com

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Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#171

Post by mmooss »

christkv wrote: post #148
wrs wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic published, not a two-word request for regulation, but a lengthy proposal for how regulation could work, with safeguards and due process. Instead, one morning the administration just woke up, grabbed the nearest hammer, and went smash, like it usually does.

They proposed a plan to ensure their dominance of the space and to cripple any competitors using regulation as the weapon. So I’m not going to feel sorry for them and their temporary plight

Do you have evidence of that?

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#172

Post by advisedwang »

sp4cec0wb0y wrote: post #138
tomjakubowski wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US regulation is, in theory, regulated by Congress, which passes laws granting regulation powers to the federal agencies. Congress and the laws it passes are, in theory, regulated by the Constitution, and interpretation thereof by the Supreme Court.

And the supreme court is unregulated (except for appointment and impeachment).

While true, it doesn't have to be.

US Constitution Article III Section 2 Clause 2 which says the supreme court's appellate jurisdiction is subject to "Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." So Congress could, for example, require the supreme court to hear every case appealed to them instead of letting the justices pick their cases. Or it could require judges to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest*. Or it could forbid the court hearing cases where an en banc appeals court was unanimous.

* which could have more teeth than the self-imposed ethics rules for conflict of interest that the court has now.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#173

Post by jmaw »

seviu wrote: post #77
nickff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that you think the US government is unpredictable and arbitrary, but that the People’s Republic of China is not? Do you remember all the PRoC’s strange and sudden policy shifts (e.g. steel, real estate, education, football/soccer, etc.)? It seems to me that in the case of AI (as with many other modern technologies), you rely on vendor/creator support and updates to stay relevant, so the ‘next’ model ma…

Right now I rely on whoever that is opensourcing the models. I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about China. But I can’t shrug off the fact that fable was taken down within minutes for reasons that are childish and petty. I am sorry but I can’t use any US AI if I don’t have the guarantee that I will be able to use it tomorrow. And Trump showed us he is willing to take it out whenever he wants. An opensource mo…

> I am sorry but I can’t use any US AI if I don’t have the guarantee that I will be able to use it tomorrow.

To be fair this is every commercial model. We have already seen GHCP increase prices by anywhere from 10-100x (depending on usage). And old models get retired all the time. While these are not exactly the same as a cutting edge model being shut down, increasing prices a super high amount leads to effectively the same outcome.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#174

Post by guelo »

ryandrake wrote: post #167
fumar wrote: post #71

Is regulation unregulated in the US? As in it’s missing consistency and transparency. Beyond Anthropic, the US signals to the world that depending and using American solutions is high risk. Is that what the US government desires? The digital battleground across regions is on the rise. I don’t see us as the US on the right path.

Unfortunately, in the USA, we are stuck with two parties. Measured along axes of competence and capability of taking action: The (D) party is competent+incapable, and the (R) party is incompetent+capable. So every four years we get to choose between governance that knows what it is doing but too paralyzed to act, and governance that doesn't know what it is doing but acts with impunity.

I don't think that's true about Ds being incapable. For example Biden's Inflation Reduction Act has been very successful at boosting clean energy industry, creating jobs, lowering emissions. Including huge benefits to red states. The problem is a lot of times Democratic solutions, like Obamacare, are too technocratic, or the benefit is too diffuse for people to notice. There's also the issue of the huge growth of the right wing's propaganda power successfully hiding any D achievements from voters.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#175

Post by quantified »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #92
fumar wrote: post #71

Is regulation unregulated in the US? As in it’s missing consistency and transparency. Beyond Anthropic, the US signals to the world that depending and using American solutions is high risk. Is that what the US government desires? The digital battleground across regions is on the rise. I don’t see us as the US on the right path.

In the US regulation is, in theory, regulated by Congress, which passes laws granting regulation powers to the federal agencies. Congress and the laws it passes are, in theory, regulated by the Constitution, and interpretation thereof by the Supreme Court.

Regulation is always by motivation. Charges can be delayed, cops can decide not to arrest, prosecutors can decide not to prosecute, etc.

Government was supposed to be high-trust, but Nixon weakened the trust, Reagan explicitly took aim at it and lots of people went along. Now the reactionaries run things. Cancer in the brain.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#176

Post by quantified »

guelo wrote: post #174
ryandrake wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, in the USA, we are stuck with two parties. Measured along axes of competence and capability of taking action: The (D) party is competent+incapable, and the (R) party is incompetent+capable. So every four years we get to choose between governance that knows what it is doing but too paralyzed to act, and governance that doesn't know what it is doing but acts with impunity.

I don't think that's true about Ds being incapable. For example Biden's Inflation Reduction Act has been very successful at boosting clean energy industry, creating jobs, lowering emissions. Including huge benefits to red states. The problem is a lot of times Democratic solutions, like Obamacare, are too technocratic, or the benefit is too diffuse for people to notice. There's also the issue of the huge growth of the…

D's absolutely suck at messaging, and they are not that good about cohesion. Of course, being overly cohesive leads to problems as we see in today's world.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#178

Post by matheusmoreira »

sanderjd wrote: post #147
matheusmoreira wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct, yet it's also a fact that Anthropic was attempting regulatory capture in order to limit open weight models, cripple their competition and solidify their market position. Nothing wrong with enjoying the sheer Schadenfreude of the situation. Their self-serving fearmongering had the most hilariously unexpected result possible.

Maybe. But I disagree in general with "nothing wrong with enjoying the sheer schadenfreude of the situation". Schadenfreude is a description of a common human impulse that is not a good impulse!

Normally I would agree with you, but in this case I'm gonna make an exception. These are billionaires who campaign against open weight models. Their misfortunes are our freedom.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#179

Post by blitzar »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #90
sailfast wrote: post #65

Any company building this kind of tech should have a separate shell headquarters on some low regulation island country. Any government work can be done via MOU with a US subsidiary staffed by Americans. This kind of capricious, unexplained control is bullsh*t. I’m not saying that I want companies to have to go offshore or that that would be a good thing. Just that you’ve got no leverage if your corporate structure ca…

A separate shell headquarters on some low regulation island country? Like FTX?

They should also have a company penthouse / polycule in said low regulation island country.

And drugs, lots of drugs.

Re: Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them

#180

Post by hintymad »

When I look at the timeline, it appears that they got exactly what they've been asking for. Or what did I miss?

April: Anthropic announces Claude Mythos. Citing safety concerns regarding the model's capabilities, they restrict access to a small group of testing partners.

May 15: Anthropic executive Chris Olah visits the Vatican to assist the Pope in publishing a 40,000-word manifesto, Magnifica Humanitas. Olah publicly states the model exhibits over 100 distinct emotional traits.

The pre-release: Anthropic briefly calls for a global halt to AI research.

The release: Anthropic launches Claude Fable 5, a consumer-facing version built on the Mythos architecture but with strict safety guardrails.

The post-release throttling: Users discover Fable 5's performance is being silently degraded on specific tasks. Anthropic acknowledges the throttling, citing the need to prevent foreign competitors from extracting synthetic training data. They promise future limitations will be transparent. Performance is notably restricted on biology and chemistry prompts.

The essay: CEO Dario publishes an essay advocating for strict government oversight. He proposes heavy regulation for any AI company exceeding $500 million in AI revenue or $1 billion in R&D spending.

The regulation: Two days later, the US government places export controls on both Mythos and Fable 5, classifying them alongside high-end semiconductor equipment. This immediately blocks Anthropic's own non-US employees from accessing the models.

The fallout: Amodei calls the export controls a "misunderstanding" that disrupts their global internal operations. Anthropic subsequently issues a statement noting that known jailbreaks for Fable 5 are also effective on OpenAI's GPT-5.5, highlighting the lack of equivalent regulatory action against their competitor.

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