This past Friday, the US Government issued an export control directive that prohibits Anthropic from giving foreign nationals access to Claude Fable or Claude Mythos, their latest models.
I don't use cloud LLM models and could not care less about government regulating them into oblivion. My local models, however, you would have to pry from my cold, dead hands.
The leading AI researchers today are the people who got in on the ground floor a decade ago. Most of them did so because they believed artificial superintelligence was a real possibility. This is why OpenAI did a bunch of stuff that no other tech company did, like incorporating as a nonprofit! That's just far too costly an action to take for PR reasons, otherwise other companies would do it.
Anthropic was founded by the people who felt OpenAI had lost the plot on AI safety. This culture may have been diluted by the people who joined since, and obviously power and money corrupt anyone over time, but clearly Amodei and Anthropic leadership in general still believe in AI safety. Their actions just don't make any sense otherwise. If they were profit-oriented, they would be deeply stupid to warn everyone about how terrible their technology is going to be - talking about it like it's nuclear weapons, instead of like it's electricity. Clearly they're not stupid, or they wouldn't be leading the most valuable AI company in the world. I see lots of people bending over backwards trying to decipher their 4d chess game. But sometimes the simplest answer is the truth.
So yes, they did ask to be regulated. But the regulations were applied with no warning, to one model, apparently in response to jailbreaks which have been possible for years, apparently used to make the model do things which many other models are capable of. The administration has been asleep at the wheel, someone finally got through to them, and they responded with this half-assed, knee-jerk intervention--even giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming this isn't retribution for the DoW episode. Seriously, access is limited based on US citizenship? Meaning Anthropic employees who helped build the model can't use it. How long until they go work for Deepseek instead? Meanwhile recently having relaxed export restrictions to Nvidia. It's like nobody in the Trump administration is reading Zvi Moshowitz at all!?
I don't use cloud LLM models and could not care less about government regulating them into oblivion. My local models, however, you would have to pry from my cold, dead hands.
fantasic article. you are right. they tried to lobby it against others, only to have it used on themselves.
The leading AI researchers today are the people who got in on the ground floor a decade ago. Most of them did so because they believed artificial superintelligence was a real possibility. This is why OpenAI did a bunch of stuff that no other tech company did, like incorporating as a nonprofit! That's just far too costly an action to take for PR reasons, otherwise other companies would do it.
Anthropic was founded by the people who felt OpenAI had lost the plot on AI safety. This culture may have been diluted by the people who joined since, and obviously power and money corrupt anyone over time, but clearly Amodei and Anthropic leadership in general still believe in AI safety. Their actions just don't make any sense otherwise. If they were profit-oriented, they would be deeply stupid to warn everyone about how terrible their technology is going to be - talking about it like it's nuclear weapons, instead of like it's electricity. Clearly they're not stupid, or they wouldn't be leading the most valuable AI company in the world. I see lots of people bending over backwards trying to decipher their 4d chess game. But sometimes the simplest answer is the truth.
If they care about AI safety, why develop AI at all? Their attitude in general is that they would like AI to slow down or stop (https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-says-ai-labs-need-coordinated-plan-halt-development-if-risks-rise-2026-06-04/), but if there's an AI race they still want to be in the lead, because they are the most concerned about safety.
So yes, they did ask to be regulated. But the regulations were applied with no warning, to one model, apparently in response to jailbreaks which have been possible for years, apparently used to make the model do things which many other models are capable of. The administration has been asleep at the wheel, someone finally got through to them, and they responded with this half-assed, knee-jerk intervention--even giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming this isn't retribution for the DoW episode. Seriously, access is limited based on US citizenship? Meaning Anthropic employees who helped build the model can't use it. How long until they go work for Deepseek instead? Meanwhile recently having relaxed export restrictions to Nvidia. It's like nobody in the Trump administration is reading Zvi Moshowitz at all!?