Tanya Mosley

And how well do the people building it understand what they've created?

My guest today, journalist Gideon Lewis-Kraus, spent months inside Anthropic trying to answer that question.

The company is one of the most powerful AI firms in the world, valued at about $350 billion, and also one of the most secretive.

It was founded by former OpenAI employees, the team behind ChatGPT, who left because they believed the race to build advanced artificial intelligence was moving too fast and could become dangerous.

Gideon Lewis Krauss is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

His piece is called What is Claude?

Anthropic Doesn't Know Either.

Our interview was recorded yesterday.

And Gideon, welcome to Fresh Air.

Let's get started by talking about the latest news.

We learned last week that the military may have used anthropics tool CLAWD during the operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

And reportedly they used it to process intelligence and analyze satellite imagery and things like that to support real-time decision-making.

What is anthropics usage guidelines?

What do they say about its use for violence or surveillance?

The Wall Street Journal said,

is also reporting that Claude was deployed through Anthropic's partnership with the data firm Palantir Technologies, which you have done quite a bit of reporting on.

And we know that Palantir works extensively with the Pentagon.

What can you tell us about their relationship?

And I guess I just wonder, is this a version of that tension that you actually even expected, basically a standoff with the Pentagon?

Let's get into your reporting.