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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of mythos class models. I'm your friend, David Pearce. And today on the show, we're going to talk about AI. We got a lot of questions from all of you over the last couple of weeks after Google I.O. and Microsoft Build and Apple's WWDC about all things AI. And then we had a just truly chaotic blow up between Anthropic and the U.S.
government over the new model Claude Fable and whether it is the most dangerous thing anyone has ever invented in history. So we're going to get The Verge's senior reporter Hayden Field. She's going to come and we're going to answer a bunch of your questions about all things AI. But first, here's a look at everything else happening on The Verge today.
This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, June 16th, 2026. Snap's first consumer-grade AR smart glasses are finally, actually, apparently coming out this fall. That's what the company announced today. They're called specs. They're thick and wide and black, and they kind of look like spy glasses that James Bond would have worn in the 1990s.
I don't know if I mean that as a compliment or an insult, but there it is. But the best part is they're going to cost $2,195. It's been a full decade since Snap's first ever pair of spectacles went on sale. Back then, they were only $130, and they weren't a huge hit even then.
I have no doubt that the tech here will be impressive, including the built-in display and the new chips, but this one might be a steep climb for Snap. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched new Surface devices, a new Surface laptop and a new Surface Pro, both of which are powered by another Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon X2.
They look good, the spec sheets are great, the colors are solid as always, and unfortunately, as with basically every gadget right now, they are too expensive. The Pro starts at $1,500 and the laptop at $1,600, both up a hundred bucks from the last generation. I am still excited about them though. The Surface lineup is some of the best stuff going in Windows world, and has been for a long time.
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Chapter 2: What is the conflict between Anthropic and the U.S. government regarding Claude Fable 5?
So on Friday night, when everyone was getting ready for the big games that were happening this weekend, Anthropic was having the opposite experience where they, at like 1 p.m., got a call from the U.S. government saying, you have 90 minutes left. to shut down access to Fable 5, its new model that had been hyping for a week, and Mythos 5, its other new model had been hyping for a week.
So Fable 5 is kind of the safeguarded version of Mythos. They're built on the same underlying model. Mythos 5 is the one that they gave access to enterprise, governments, you know, select partners.
Mythos is the one that they were like, if we release this to the world, it will destroy everything. We can't possibly let you have it. Right. I'm barely overstating what Anthropix said when they put this out.
Exactly. And that's what they still say. And then Fable is the one where it's built on the same exact model, but it has a lot of safeguards, apparently, so it's safe to release to the public. Now, we don't know for sure, but the independent red teamers I have spoken with have been pretty impressed with the safeguards so far, which is really saying something. I wasn't expecting that. Now,
What happened on Friday was at 1 p.m., yep, they got a call from the U.S. government saying, hey, this has been like we are aware of a jailbreak here for Fable, the safe one for the public. So you've got to shut it down within 90 minutes. Anthropic asked for more details. They said, OK, well, what's going on? Like, you know, let's let's talk about this. And the U.S.
government apparently was not happy that they asked for additional details. And they said, nope. It's been more than 90 minutes. You got to shut it down. And they were hit with a export control directive at 5.21 p.m. on Friday. So that was like basically saying, hey, you cannot allow any foreign national to use either of these models. Even if they work at Anthropic. So if you're not a U.S.
citizen, you can't use the model. And obviously, Anthropic was like, well, we can't control that. So let's just shut it down. We can't really. I mean, these are out there now, you know. So they had to completely sideline them. The whole weekend was spent trying to kind of make nice with the Trump administration.
Apparently, Dario was not available for the first hour that the Trump administration called. Anthropic called the Trump administration back within 15 minutes when that first call came in. But Dario, it took an hour and 15 minutes from that first call. He was unavailable originally. And so that created a whole point of contention as well. There was some rumors that he was on a wellness retreat.
I can confirm that he was not on a wellness retreat initially. But he still was not available for an hour and 15 minutes. So, yeah, there was a lot of drama going on, lots of virtual meetings all over the weekend. Then Anthropic ended up flying out three of its senior staff to D.C. on Sunday. Notably, Dario, I don't think, was among them. He was still meeting virtually.
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Chapter 3: How does the Anthropic and U.S. government situation affect AI development?
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All right, let's move on to a couple of other questions we got from the audience. One question we got a few times that is pertinent to you and I think very interesting is we got a question from Andrew that is basically representative. It says, here in the UK, people don't use iMessage all that much. We know. Listen, everybody, I want you to know that we know. I don't know anyone who does.
We all use WhatsApp. So Siri AI isn't going to have access to a whole load of context and info for me. Is Apple likely to ever allow third parties to add to the index? Seems like a big deal for international markets. What would be the business machinations for both sides?
My question to you, Hayden, is the question in the middle there, which is we are in a new kind of data race in all of this AI stuff. Apple just launched Siri AI, and one of the things that it is able to do is do a much better job of indexing all the data on your phone in order to be able to more successfully use Siri. If I'm meta, I make WhatsApp.
Do I have any incentive at all to play nice with Apple here?
Only if Meta falls behind. I think it's the same type of thing as why Apple worked with Google to make the new Siri. I mean, they were behind. They were like, we don't really have a choice. You know, things are advancing at such a rate. if you can't beat them, join them because they're already behind. And so I think that if Meta, you know, a lot of drama is happening at Meta right now.
They have had a lot of internal meetings where engineers are mad. The culture is really bad right now, according to reports. They feel like they're falling behind. Alexander Wang is reportedly not that happy. Now, We'll see how this all plays out. I mean, they have hired a lot of good talent.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the export control directive on AI models?
We're constantly in this cycle where everything just repeats and repeats and repeats. And I'm like, if you're in this industry long enough or writing about this industry long enough, everything comes back around. And this also reminds me of the meta rebrand from Facebook. Now they're so regretful of that, it seems like. And it's like Siri AI just kills me. I can't believe that they did that.
And so many of these... I think truly there should be like a class that executives have to take where they like talk directly to their users every week or something.
Because I'm like, I think that sometimes people get so out of touch on what users actually want compared to like what investors want, which I guess is in America, you do have to cater to investors because of like, that's the law, I guess, when you're a public company. But it is just crazy how far the gap can be.
Siri AI is a terrible name and everyone who came up with it should feel bad. It's basically my takeaway. But I am curious, if you are a person out there who has strong anti-AI feelings and you have experienced the new Siri in any way, I really want to know how you feel about it because I think it's a different kind of AI being put in front of people and I want to know how you feel about it.
So call the hotline, send us emails. We love hearing from you. Hayden, good to see you. Thanks for coming to hang out. Thanks. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Hayden for being here. And thank you, as always, for watching and listening and sending us questions.
If you have questions about AI, about Anthropic and the government, about anything else that we talk about on this show, please keep reaching out. The hotline is 866-VERGE11. The email is vergecastattheverge.com. We absolutely love hearing from you about anything and everything.
In addition to the Slack channel, by the way, there's now a Google Doc that Travis, our producer, keeps of all the hotline questions. It's my favorite Google Doc of all the Google Docs that I have. And as always, a reminder, the best thing you can do to support all of this that we're doing is to subscribe to The Verge, theverge.com slash subscribe.
It gets you all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage of Anthropic and OpenAI and Siri and everything else. the best thing you can do is subscribe. Thank you to everyone who does, and thank you in advance. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
This show is produced by Josh Cajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Aaron Locascio. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.
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