Was Trump right to ban the most advanced AI?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis, the host of Politics Now. And sometimes it can be hard to cut through all the noise from the Canberra bubble. But on the Politics Now podcast, bursting it wide open is our core business. I'm joined by the brightest minds at the ABC to break down the polyspeak and have a chat about what's actually going on behind the scenes. It's called Politics Now and you can find it on ABC Listener.
What is the significance of Trump's ban on Anthropic's AI models?
It's an AI company valued at almost a trillion dollars. Donald Trump is clipping anthropic's wings. The US president effectively banned the company's state-of-the-art AI models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, citing security concerns. So how significant is it that the US government can simply cut off access to groundbreaking AI? Today, Sharon Goldman, journalist and founder of Ground Level AI, on whether the ban is really justified. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Sharon, the Trump administration has had a fractured relationship with Anthropic. There's a sort of love-hate thing going on, isn't there? There is, absolutely. That's a good way of putting it. And at one point, Donald Trump actually described Anthropic as a radical left woke company. And earlier this year, he ordered any business working with the military to stop using it. So just tell me what happened then.
OK, so this was back in March. The government had already been working with Anthropic, the Pentagon company. had been using its family of models called Claude for a variety of purposes. And the Pentagon wanted certain restrictions removed from Anthropic's existing contract, including restrictions for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. And for Anthropic to agree to a new contract, and Anthropic refused. This was back in March. And in response... The Trump administration canceled the deals, designated Anthropica supply chain risk. And that's really quite a label. It's really historically been reserved for companies tied to foreign adversaries. But as you said, it means that no defense contractors can use Anthropix technology in the completion of any work for the Department of Defense.
Yeah, and a huge blow that was for Anthropic.
Right. They went to DC and tried to negotiate. They sued. But in April, Anthropic then introduced Claude Mythos, caused a stir because it was so skilled at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. People said it was too dangerous to release to the public. Mythos was initially restricted to select organizations that But then at the end of May, Anthropic announced that they had a new model coming out that was a mythos-level model. And on June 9th, they released Claude Fable 5. And this was like, A model at the same level of mythos, but they said that it didn't have the same cybersecurity risks. But just a few days later, the U.S. government shut it down.
Anthropic says it will abruptly disable its most advanced AI models for all users after the suspension came after the U.S. government took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the use of the models by any non-U.S. national.
They hit Anthropic with what was really unprecedented export controls, saying that they had to cut off foreign access to this Fable 5. Apparently, it was due to a warning from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy about cybersecurity fears, about the idea that there had been a jailbreak when Amazon was testing it. And so the net effect was that suddenly... the US government had cut off access to this other model.
Okay, all right. So hang on, just so I've got this straight. Anthropic, it brought out Fable 5, which basically had more safeguards in place than its mythos model. That's right. Which it had to kind of shelve because of safety concerns. And hundreds of millions of people, according to Anthropic, were actually using Fable 5. Tell me, what does Fable 5 do exactly? I never actually used it.
I never used it. Well, that's not true. I did. It was there for a few days. I mean, it was just, it was part of the family of models that you could choose from.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:47
2
What is the significance of Trump's ban on Anthropic's AI models?
0:47–7:44
3
How did the Trump administration's relationship with Anthropic evolve?
7:44–9:46
4
What led to the cancellation of Anthropic's contracts with the Pentagon?
9:46–16:05