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Anthropic is changing course after facing criticism for quietly downgrading certain requests to its most capable AI model.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the $965 billion company released a version of its most capable model, Mythos. Anthropic revealed Mythos in April, but held back any Mythos-class models from the public partly because the company said it was extremely adept at skirting cybersecurity defenses and was too dangerous to release.<\/p>\n
This week, though, it opted to release the Mythos-class model, Fable 5, even as its capabilities \u201cexceed those of every model we\u2019ve previously made generally available,\u201d according to Anthropic. Dianne Na Penn, Anthropic\u2019s head of product management, research, and labs, previously told Fortune the company felt comfortable releasing Fable 5 because it feels \u201cmore confident with our safety guardrails in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, it was one of those guardrails, buried in a 319-page safety document, that earlier this week prompted a wave of backlash from AI researchers and other users online, and has now prompted the company to improve its transparency.<\/p>\n
Information found in the Fable 5\u2019s system card, a long document of safety disclosures, revealed the model would silently downgrade some requests related to advanced AI development. If, for example, an AI researcher is using Fable 5 to build their own AI, the program would default to a less capable model.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some AI researchers complained Anthropic\u2019s move would slow down AI development, including Jeremy Howard, the cofounder of nonprofit research group Fast.ai.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEasy solution to slow down recursive AI self improvement: The lab with the top-ranked model must agree THEY must not use it for working on frontier AI. But everyone else should have access to it. By definition, this means the frontier doesn\u2019t advance,\u201d he wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Anthropic\u2019s critics got at least part of what they were asking for: visibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re changing Fable 5\u2019s safeguards for frontier LLM development to make them visible,\u201d an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune. \u201cStarting this week, flagged requests will visibly fall back to Opus 4.8. On the API, any flagged requests will return a reason for their refusal. You will see this every time it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company will continue to downgrade some requests, partly because its terms of service prohibit its model from being used to create competing AI systems, a restriction the company said is standard across the industry.<\/p>\n
Yet, it also cited national security as part of the reason why its large language model downgrades or rejects some requests. The company said it doesn\u2019t want foreign adversaries to improve their AI capabilities to the detriment of the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. and its allies hold an edge in frontier chips and the highly optimized software that runs them at full potential. These safeguards ensure Claude isn\u2019t used to erode that advantage\u2014by optimizing chips developed by those adversaries, for example,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The company also emphasized its restrictions\u00a0 \u201cdo not affect the vast majority of coding and ML work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthropic\u2019s change of course highlights how quickly AI safety measures are becoming a part of the national security conversation. Earlier this year, Anthropic faced a standoff with the Department of War after it refused to give it full access to Claude models. The company took issue with language that said the Pentagon could use its models for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n
In the end, the Department of War labeled Anthropic a \u201csupply chain risk\u201d to national security, limiting defense contractors and military agencies from using its products. Earlier this month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth rejected Anthropic\u2019s petition to change this designation, setting the stage for a federal court battle that remains unresolved.<\/p>\n
Anthropic\u2019s move with Fable 5 also comes after the company filed confidentially for an IPO earlier this month. While the company has staked much of its public identity on being an AI lab that puts safety first, its initial decision to obscure when safeguards were being applied touched a nerve in the AI research community. In a statement, the company acknowledged it had gotten the issue wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made the wrong tradeoff and we apologize for not getting the balance right,\u201d an Anthropic spokesperson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Anthropics #users #requests #downgraded #national #security #backlash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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