Did Anthropic collapse in the face of Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s demand that Anthropic’s guardrails on their AI “Claude” be deactivated?
The Trump administration placed AI firm Anthropic on a far-reaching national security blacklist Friday, directing federal agencies to stop using its technology and banning any other company that does business with the military from working with it, effective immediately. …
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social, using the administration’s preferred name for the Defense Department. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.” [WaPo]
Such guardrails include … protections against its technology being used to power fully autonomous weapons or wide-scale domestic surveillance. I’m a little surprised Anthropic refused.
Note the Trumpian response of invoking fear and being lefty. Its presence means it’s a boilerplate response and has little meaning beyond Trump is frustrated.
Hegseth’s pompous statement on the matter is here, but isn’t worth quoting. This topic has stirred emotions for years, and this is no different as this rather shrill and, I think, dubious post on Daily Kos demonstrates.
How will this finish? Someone will claim to have a higher performance AI than Anthropic’s Claude and will sell out to the blustery Federal Government. However, that may take a while as higher performance will require proof, and Trump may no longer be President at that point. He’ll be too busy defending himself from a number of charges to pay attention to this, which he may not even remember.
