(Preview) The Anthropic Saga Continues, Fox and the Future of Streaming, Q&A on ChatGPT, Agentic Shopping, Autonomous Driving

Summary

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

(Preview) The Anthropic Saga Continues, Fox and the Future of Streaming, Q&A on ChatGPT, Agentic Shopping, Autonomous Driving

Date: June 19, 2026
Hosts: Andrew Sharp (A) and Ben Thompson (B)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the ongoing saga involving Anthropic, the AI company behind models like Fable and Mythos, and recent U.S. government export controls impacting their latest models. Ben and Andrew break down the complexities of export regulations for AI, Anthropic’s culture and posture regarding AI safety, and broader issues in AI policy and public messaging. The episode also briefly touches on the commercialization of major sporting events like the World Cup, and the evolving relationship between business incentives and tradition.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Hydration Breaks & Commercialization of Sports

Starts at [01:03]

• Ben’s "controversial" take: Hydration breaks in the World Cup, often maligned as a disruption or mere money grab for extra commercials, are actually improving the game by allowing teams to reset, resulting in more engaging second halves.

  “We’re actually fixing soccer...quarters are a good idea.” — Ben, [05:31]

• Discussion on the U.S. approach:
  The hosts joke about how the U.S. often implements policies “in the stupidest way possible” ([02:33]), using universal healthcare and now hydration breaks as examples. Ben argues that these breaks benefit the game, even if they originate as a profit optimization under the guise of player safety.

• Andrew on honesty and commercialization:

  “My take on hydration breaks is that they should just be called commercial breaks.” — Andrew, [06:00]

• Flow into World Cup enthusiasm:
  The hosts share personal World Cup experiences and habits, highlighting the "eventization" of sports and how even non-fans become captivated by big moments ([09:04]).

2. The Anthropic Export Control Saga

Starts at [09:40]

• Summary of the situation:
  The U.S. Department of Commerce issued an export control directive suspending access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos models by foreign nationals. This led to widespread removal of Fable from the market.

• Challenges in coverage:
  Ben and Andrew express frustration at the lack of transparency, with much non-public information influencing what's happening. The story feels vital but is hard to pin down given limited facts ([10:17]).

• Ben’s broad concern:
  Ben articulates ongoing concern with Anthropic as a company—not for being bad actors, but for their self-righteous, exclusive approach to AI safety:

  “People who think they are the only ones who are trustworthy and ought to make decisions for the rest of humanity... the track record is not good.” — Ben, [11:43]

• Government understanding of AI:
  The hosts explore the disconnect between policy-makers and technologists, noting the difficulty in explaining the difference between deterministic and probabilistic software to those in government ([13:01]).

  “The reason why AI is...pretty darn generalizable—is precisely because it’s not deterministically designed to handle every sort of thing.” — Ben, [15:08]

• Security risks and model advancement:
  They debate whether suspending access only briefly delays inevitable security risks, arguing that the best defense is aggressively patching vulnerabilities rather than trying to ban risky models outright ([20:36]).

• Key analogy:
  Ben compares the needed effort to the Manhattan Project, urging a large-scale, proactive effort to shore up code security, rather than futile attempts at total control ([20:35]).

3. Anthropic’s Culture, Safety Rhetoric, and Authority

Starts at [21:32]

• Anthropic’s exclusivity problem:
  Ben objects to what he sees as Anthropic’s implicit assertion that only they are fit to govern AI, equating their stance with a desire to “run the world.”

  “The problem I have with Anthropic is the implicit and sometimes explicit: only we can handle this. Only we are responsible. Only we are properly concerned about the dangers. It’s that exclusivity.” — Ben, [22:06]

• Impact on government & policy:
  The hosts discuss how Anthropic’s posture leads to trouble with regulators, setting unrealistic expectations of perfect security and causing friction with authorities.

• Andrew’s point:
  Anthropic’s delay in providing full disclosure to the government (as cited in a Washington Post report) reflects their lack of understanding about who truly holds power:

  “It seems like Anthropic still doesn’t understand that the government is ultimately in charge, and it’s really not that complicated.” — Andrew, [28:25]

4. Epistemic Humility and Communication in AI

Starts at [23:50]

• Ben calls for “epistemic humility”:
  He notes the dangers in both overstating control and dismissing risk, advocating for more humility and better communication with both government and the public.

• Personal anecdote:
  Ben recounts a time at Microsoft where he was told, “Your what is excellent, your how needs a lot of work,” drawing a parallel to Anthropic’s communication failures ([25:36]).

• Prescription for Anthropic:
  Both hosts agree Anthropic would benefit from more transparent, collaborative, and less patronizing engagement with external stakeholders—especially regulators ([27:08]).

5. Fundamental Clash: Who Decides?

Starts at [28:28]

• Final Authority:
  The recurring philosophical debate emerges: should AI companies or governments have the final say on use cases and access? Anthropic has demonstrated an unwillingness to cede control, insisting on dictating terms even with the federal government.

  “There’s an assertion of authority that is reserved solely for them. And it’s not just with their customers. It’s not just with other companies. It’s with the federal government. That is the fundamental issue.” — Ben, [29:10]

• Andrew’s blunt conclusion:

  “When the government says jump, Anthropic should say ‘How high?’ … that’s just the way it’s gonna work.” — Andrew, [30:01]

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Memorable Quotes

• “Quarters are a good idea. Hydration breaks...we’re backing into making soccer better and everyone should thank us for it.” — Ben, [05:31]
• “My take on hydration breaks is that they should just be called commercial breaks.” — Andrew, [06:00]
• “People who think they are the only ones who are trustworthy and ought to make decisions for the rest of humanity...the track record is not good.” — Ben, [11:43]
• “The reason why AI is...pretty darn generalizable—is precisely because it’s not deterministically designed to handle every sort of thing.” — Ben, [15:08]
• “The problem I have with Anthropic is the implicit and sometimes explicit: only we can handle this.” — Ben, [22:06]
• “It seems like Anthropic still doesn’t understand that the government is ultimately in charge, and it’s really not that complicated.” — Andrew, [28:25]
• “There’s an assertion of authority that is reserved solely for them. … That is the fundamental issue.” — Ben, [29:10]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Hydration Breaks & Commercialization of Soccer: [01:03] – [09:04]
• Anthropic Export Control Saga: [09:40] – [21:32]
• Anthropic’s Safety Rhetoric & Government Frustrations: [21:32] – [28:28]
• Clash Over Authority: AI Companies vs. Government: [28:28] – [30:28]

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Tone & Style

The episode features a lively, slightly irreverent tone typical of Andrew and Ben. Ben’s assessments are pointed but thoughtful; Andrew offers balance, humor, and pressing questions. The conversation is candid, direct, and critical, but strives for clarity in dissecting complex issues for listeners who may not be tech insiders.

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Useful for Listeners Who…

• Want a deep dive on current AI policy battles and regulatory complexities.
• Are interested in the intersection of business incentives, tech ethics, and government authority.
• Appreciate lively, insightful debate that mixes real-world analogies with structural critique.
• Enjoy tech commentary with personal anecdotes and well-articulated, contrarian takes.

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For more detailed discussions or past episodes, visit SharpTech.fm or check the show notes for subscription options.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

[B]

Sad, Andrew.

[A]

Why sad?

[B]

Because been forced over the last week to use these really crappy AI models. Only 5.5 in OS Opus. Where's Fable?

[A]

I told you, somebody needs to jailbreak Fable back to life for us.

[B]

The 48 hours of truly leap forward in terms of model capabilities.

[A]

Just poor Ben. His wings have been clipped here. Yeah. Now here we are living in the stone age. But I mean, look, only a matter of days until the rule is reversed and Fable is brought back to life would be my guess.

[B]

We are going to start is that Andrew Sharp reports or. Or.

[A]

Look, just as I. It occurred to me as we come on to record to talk about the export controls and everything else, like by Friday night, I'm sure there will be a twist that renders half of this obsolete. We're not going to start with anthropic though actually, because you inform me that you have a World cup take related to the hydration breaks. Oh, you want to know?

[B]

I don't know if we could do this at the top of the show because I know I. I'm concerned I'm going to make people so mad that, I mean, my concern is they will

[A]

hit stop and unsubscribe, right? Okay.

[B]

It was at the end of the show that they might go and unsubscribe. But then at least they've listened to the whole show. But okay, if we put it up front, they might not listen to the rest of the episode. Although maybe if we make the rest episode really good, then they'll decide to continue to be subscribers.

[A]

A bit of Grace after 90 minutes, fine.

[B]

We can say I'll drop it. Okay, here you go. Here's my World Cup. World cup hydration take. So you remember previously and people sort of got annoyed at this, but I still stand by it. The US implements these policies in the stupidest way possible, right? So like I said, like we have universal health care. It's that everyone has to be served by an emergency room. That made a lot of people mad. But like I stand by it. Like the fact of the matter is everybody, if you, if you're in an emergency, you're going to get health care. Like that is universal health care in the stupidest way possible. Oh, it doesn't cover preventive. Yes, I know it's dumb.

[A]

In a very narrowly defined way, it's universal.

[B]

The point of making that analogy is that it's a really stupid way to do accomplish policy. Or if that was in the context of AI data centers, they're going to just end up paying people to build them. And that's how we're going to backdoor into AI, like putting money in people's pockets.

[A]

Ubi.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the stupidest way possible. So this is sort of context for my break take, which is soccer is. And it is called soccer, by the way. Do you know where the word soccer comes from?

[A]

I have no idea where it comes from.

[B]

England, to be clear.

[A]

Okay, great.

[B]

So, right. Football was a sport played on your feet as opposed to on horses. And then there was association football. SOCC was soccer came from England. They, you know, I'm sorry that we preserved English culture better than they did and used the word soccer.

[A]

They've been getting it wrong for 150 years.

[B]

What the hell happened? That's right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

No, that's not the take. Don't, don't unsubscribe yet. Give me a couple more minutes and I'll really make you mad. So soccer has all these traditions, the way it's always been played. And you know, and one of them is you have 45 minute halves. The clock doesn't stop. And, and that's just like part of the whole thing with the hydration break is while the US Is really hot. Number one. Come on. It's. Seriously, this is tied into the like, look, go to Taiwan in the summer. That's hot. I would come back to Wisconsin every year. How do you go to Wisconsin this summer? It's so humid. I'm like, it's not humid at all. But it's not that hot. But whatever. Everyone's like, it's so hot. We need to have, you know, some games is going to be too hot. Players need to stop for their health and safety and get water. Oh, if we do it in some games, it wouldn't be a fair. We have to do it for all the games. And actually, what it's actually doing is there's an extra commercial break in the middle of the game. And it's like a commercial break or you're not going to change the channel because you're like in the middle of the game. It's a huge moneymaker. Everyone's upset about it. You're destroying soccer just to make a few bucks. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's my take. We're actually fixing soccer.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The like. So one of the complaints about the hydration break is the Momentum changes. Like a team's like, on their heels.

[A]

Yeah. And they come back out, hate it. Because it's actually changing some of the outcomes of these games because guys come out of it. Like, I think Holland scored right after a hydration break. That's Erling Holland.

[B]

What happened the England Croatia game yesterday? Croatia was like, like on their heels. They come out, reset, score a few goals, and guess what? England was definitely the better team. Croatia. England was incredibly impressive in that game. That game was so much more entertaining because of the hydration break. Allowing Croatia to reset score a couple of goals made it very gripping. England up winning 4 to 2. It made the game better. Guess what? Quarters are a good idea.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Hydration breaks. A blatant sort of like, grow up. It's not that hot out. Combined with a pure money grab, we're backing into making soccer better and everyone should thank us for it.

[A]

Fewer exhausted players is a good thing. Is I think

[B]

I like to see people performing at their best. Subi. So just anyhow, don't unsubscribe, but don't sue.

[A]

Ben.

[B]

But look. That's right.

[A]

My take on hydration breaks is that they should just be called commercial breaks. So maybe we'll get there by the time we get to the next World Cup. Because I do understand the instinctive rage at branding this profit optimization strategy as a player safety initiative. That's right.

[B]

There's a lot to be said for just being honest. Okay.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And guess what? You know what's good for the game if everyone's making more money. Like, like you get more money. Like, you think about, we're all adults here.

[A]

Everybody else has commercial breaks. It's fine. And I hadn't considered the idea that actually it's going to make the second halves more entertaining than they would be otherwise. So as far as I'm concerned, not a bad hydration break take. Soccer fans of the world, or football

[B]

fans of the world, if you're like super excited for the game, imagine you have the US Is playing tomorrow, Australia. Maybe you've already watched it by the time you listen to this. Maybe you're pre partying. You're getting ready. You know what? You might need a dehydration break. And so you. Not so bad in the middle of a half run to the bathroom.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

My perspective.

[A]

Well, my number one World cup take. You created a giant World cup group chat and there's like 15 different people in there. You added me without asking me. So I've been.

[B]

You were dropping World Cup. You were you were dropping World cup takes in.

[A]

I was dropping Champions League final takes a couple weeks ago. Not World cup takes, but being in the. In the group chat. I'm fairly busy. I've got two toddlers, bunch of podcasts. You are busier than I am, though. And I am flabbergasted by how many World cup games you have consumed over the past week or so. You continue to be the biggest sports fan I've ever met, so congratulations.

[B]

Well, thank you. I love the World Cup. It's great. Games are on all day. The. Did you see the Hu Xi Jin?

[A]

The.

[B]

The. The Chinese propaganda. Oh, yeah. He put out a tweet complaining about the game times, that they should be catering to China. As far as when the games are played. The games are being played from, like, 11 in the morning till like, 1 in the morning.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Relax.

[A]

9pm Pacific. Some of the games are clearly being catered to China. So China's being taken care of here and you're watching almost every single one. I'm getting texts from you throughout the day about different World cup games I didn't even know were happening. So I look forward to joining you

[B]

probably by the time you get to the. What's great about the World Cup? I'm not actually a soccer watcher. I like every World Cup. Like, oh, I should watch more soccer now. It doesn't happen, like, the whole week. I'm sure it's great. I appreciate the quality of play with teams that play together all year.

[A]

Whatever. I get it in theory, where you're at. Okay.

[B]

No, I am all in on the eventization of sports. I love Big. It's like tennis. I watch the Big Four. I don't watch your regular tennis match. Yeah, you know, I will watch, like, the big golf tournaments. I'm not watching it every week. I am all in on. I want events. I'm in on the events. I enjoy the atmosphere around the events, the social media on events, and I don't want to deal with it the rest of the year. So it's perfect.

[A]

There you go. Well, I would say I'm halfway in on the World cup, but all the way in on America. And I had a great time watching USA's opening match, and we'll be watching on Friday night in Seattle. But for now, Ben, we have news to get to. We did talk Anthropic and Fable last week, but as I'm sure 98% of the audience knows by now, late Friday afternoon, the Commerce Department issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos or mythos by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.

[B]

So fable was that or outside of Anthropic.

[A]

Indeed, that was part of the problem as well. Fable was pulled from the market altogether. Remains off the market as you noted at the top. And as we record this Thursday afternoon that directive is in place, we'll see how much longer it lasts. What do you think of where we are right now? It's kind of a frustrating story to talk and write about because on one hand it's the biggest story in technology. It also seems like there's a good bit of non public information that's informing behavior here. So how do you wrap your arms around where we are?

[B]

It's hard to wrap your arms around it in part because what you said, they're like, what do we not know? It's also hard because everyone in this situation is incredibly frustrating to me on a personal level. Great. So I actually feel like, I almost feel this week I took the opportunity to just write about anthropic in general. We don't need to rehash it because we talked about on Sharptech last week and that was one of those ones. I actually got a fair number of requests like, you need to write this out. This idea of the sort of fusion of the safety culture with lots of choices that they make that are great for their business and like what a magical alchemy that is. And so I wrote that on, I wrote that on Monday. We already covered it last week. No, listen to that. But it was, you know, Fable was a way into that and I said it there. I'm like, I'm not actually going to really talk about this because who knows what the heck is going on. So you. But implicit in that, and anyone who's been listening to these podcasts for a while knows is an overall frustration with Anthropic and a general concern about this company. Not because they're purposely being bad actors, but my overarching concern of people who think they are the only ones who are trustworthy and ought to make decisions for the rest of humanity is just

[A]

the track record is not good.

[B]

Yeah, I don't think that works. I don't think that works. And that's underlies so much about their sort of posture in general. I mean there was like a write up of this AI summit or whatever that, that a day or two ago and you could just even Amaday's comments. It's like, clearly he doesn't trust OpenAI. He's like kind of trust Google. But it's like, we should decide. And I think Altman took a much better sort of approach, which is actually we shouldn't be deciding. Someone else needs to be deciding. And I think that, you know, that's closer to my sensibilities, I would say, say for sure. So in general, frustrated with Anthropic. Like, not just in this case.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At the same time, from what we've been able to garner, there's a good chance that actually the administration is just being incredibly stupid here. And so I almost feel like I've been a little too hard on Anthrapic this week, because from what I can gather, and again, who knows, we don't have enough details about what's happening, about what's not happening, but there's sort of an Occam's Razor explanation here, which is the US Administration is like, stop it from doing this thing. And Anthropics is like, you can't stop it from doing.

[A]

That's not how AI works.

[B]

That's not how it works. And the example here is, what's the difference between find the vulnerability in this software versus help me patch vulnerabilities in this software? It's the exact same request. And the reality is, Mythos is clearly, if you. Again, if you used Fable, you could just feel it's clearly ahead. It's something new. No one has anything to match it. But if the sort of history of the last few months slash years continues, we're going to have Mythos level models in the near future.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so what is the best possible thing we can do? Knowing that's coming? Everyone needs to be working overtime to patch their vulnerabilities. And we've been talking about this for several months on Sharp Tech, like, it's going to be a messy few years. And it feels like there's this sense in the White House of trying to patch, you know, put your thumb in the dike as far as this wave that's coming. And the reality is, is the wave is going to go over the whole wall. Like, it's going. It's going to be a mess. And the best thing we can do is offense is the best defense, or I don't know if that's the right analogy here, but go out there, find stuff, work feverishly for the next little bit to fix as many vulnerabilities as we can before this is truly, broadly available. And every day that this conflict is going on are days when people aren't able to do this. And I think it comes back to. And this is where I do bring anthropic back in the conversation. How many people in There are some people in the White House for sure, that understand how AI works. But at the highest levels, this distinction between a probabilistic piece of software versus a deterministic one, deterministic one, you put in hard rules, it's like, yeah, deterministic,

[A]

you could say you can't make this available and this isn't possible and you can hit some buttons to turn off different features that create unreasonable risks. You can't really do that with AI, Right?

[B]

That's like the magic of AI, right? So the strengths are weaknesses. That applies to sort of everything. The reason why AI can is, you know, is it truly fully generalizable? I think not as much as sort of the advocates claim, but it's pretty darn generalizable. And the reason it is is precisely because it's not deterministically designed to handle every sort of thing. And we see this in like self driving cars, right? The reason why self driving cars took forever to actually be viable is because people spent years trying to hard code every single scenario that a car might encounter. And there's so many variables in a car that like you can't do that. What you need to do is you need to have an end to end model that is basically, it's not exactly the same as an lm, but it's the same concept of sort of a neural net that, that generalizes from being exposed to tons and tons and tons and tons of scenarios and develops its own sort of internal heuristics and probability distributions such that when something new happens, it kind of knows how to react without being told what to do. And you think about this, it's not just that it's not deterministic, it's that putting in deterministic rules into that functionality makes it worse in many respects because you're actually limiting it artificially in its capability to understand different situation. And we're just moving into this fundamentally new paradigm that's totally different. And it's really easy for people to look at AI as a fancy search engine. Yeah, we had this conversation a few years ago. You used AI for the greatest of all talk, looked up some stats, which

[A]

by the way, it's gotten a lot better at pulling recent stats and everything else. It's a lot more accurate than it was two and a half years ago. But indeed it's a different sort of tool than traditional Google.

[B]

Right? And what I told you at the time is like, no, that's the exact wrong function that you're trying to do. Right.

[A]

And so it's the worst thing you could use ChatGPT for.

[B]

Well, then this gets into also, like, there's so many issues that. Or so many concepts that flow out of this. Like, what's a point that I made again and again is actually a lot of the, you know, what is the shape of the crash going to look like or the bubble popping? What it's going to look like is people attempting to plaster on AI to existing workflows that were built around a certain way of computing, being frustrated, it continually doesn't work. And then what's going to actually happen is people are going to completely rethink approaches. This idea of moving from putting advertising next to an article to a feed.

[A]

Like AI companies built atop this technology

[B]

to take advantage of it. That's right. And so this in the challenge is this takes years, it takes a long time for people to even reset their expectations of what's possible and what this means. And in the meantime, what we do have is this ability to look at code bases, find vulnerabilities and exploit them basically autonomously hack the planet, just like hackers.

[A]

Great movie. So to anchor people in this take, I think a lot of this springs from the report that Amazon was able to jailbreak Fable and raise, and no

[B]

one knows for sure what this jailbreak is. Right. There's this analyst, researcher that saw a report from Anthropic, so this is all anthropic spin, to be queer, who characterized it as a very basic, like, just slightly change your wording. And now it's looking for vulnerabilities, which I think, again, it's an Occam's Razor explanation. It's actually very. You could believe that would happen. And then Anthropic saying, well, look, that's very minor. You can't stop that. And the White House being you guys doing it again, we're just asking you to stop it and you won't stop it. And that's where Anthropic's at fault. They've created the conditions of mistrust with the administration.

[A]

And also though like is the core issue for Anthropic, that the way they discuss AI risk then creates unreasonable expectations.

[B]

The whole mythos rollout of all this is like, like they go on for years talking about AI is like nuclear weapons. Then they have this huge project, Glasswing. We're going to like, this is way too dangerous to release. We're going to secure the banks and secure the big tech companies and then like two months later, okay, everyone can use it now. And then you turn around and like you're creating the conditions they expectation of

[A]

perfect security given how dangerous this weapon is for the whole world. And we're going to be very careful. And then when it's revealed that actually you can't possibly paper over every possible risk that arises from this technology, other people who've been paying attention freak out and start to try to take back control. It seems like that's some of what's happened here.

[B]

Yeah. The problem is that this is very like I'm not minimizing the risk. It's actually quite scary. Like almost all software on the web is likely insecure. Like just and it. But the problem is that you're not going to foreclose that forever entirely. No, you're, you're. What is the administration buying with this? Weeks or months, maybe a year.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And the best way to solve the, the only way to solve the security problem is to go through it is to actually work and patch stuff like crazy. And by the way, the defenders have an advantage. They have the code. They can, they can examine their code bases, they can fix the problems. Even if you're attacking something from the outside, you're, it's a little bit more of a challenge. It's more obfuscated. You, you, you, you have to sort of figure it out. And the, the goal here needs to be to map like the Manhattan Project we need is a whole scale. Let's go through all this code on the web, all these open source projects which to Anthropic's credit they did do that's Project Glasswing sort of aspect but we're just not there. There's, there's just not an acceptance of this reality.

[A]

Yeah. Well, Michael says if Ben's going to get so outraged about Anthropic's actions even when he believes the safety threat is real, I'd love to hear a positive vision for what they should be doing to address safety concerns that wouldn't be self serving. I agree with Ben's analysis about this being a convenient source of cultural alignment with the business incentives. But I just don't have a problem with it. What am I missing? So if you were running policy at Anthropic, what would you advise them to do to handle some of the safety risks?

[B]

The problem I have with Anthropic is the implicit and sometimes explicit only we can handle this. Only we are responsible. Only we are properly concerned about the dangers. It's that exclusivity that is. And what's implicit in that is only we should control AI combined with the rhetoric of AI is going to run the world. People got mad at this sentence in my article, but it's just a logical construction. If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. I'm like, they want to run the world. Like, that's the implication of saying we should run AI and AI is going to run the world.

[A]

I mean, how explicitly have they ever said we should run AI? Is it more inferring from their behavior?

[B]

I mean. Yeah. What behavior? And I think their rhetoric. They clearly don't think Sam Altman should run AI, that's for sure.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

Which, by the way, I completely agree, to be clear.

[A]

So it sounds like, to Sam's credit, it sounds like even Sam agrees on that point at this.

[B]

Well, he's, he's cleaned up his rhetoric a lot. I think there's a. There was a real, A lot of bad rhetoric that came. And this is the challenge, because people are like, look, why should they not talk about, like, jobs, upheaval? And no, there's the opposite mistake, which is to say, nothing is going to happen and where you're basically lying through your teeth. Like, I think there's an aspect of that in Silicon Valley that is like, nothing. This is not going to know. It is going to be disruptive. Now, we might not know exactly how it's going to be disruptive. There's no. You go back to the Internet. The Internet was incredibly disruptive. Like the entire structure of society 25

[A]

years, we were the frogs in the boiling water for a while there.

[B]

The administration is the Trump administration, which is directly downstream from the structural changes wrought by the Internet and what it did to media. Like, so the, the, you know, imagine going back to 1993 or whatever, when the world Web comes out and say, this is going to lead to Donald Trump being president. Right. It's would have blown people's minds. AI is going to be arguably even bigger. But part of the problem is the, the certainty and prescriptiveness of what's going to happen. There is, there's an aspect of things are going to change. And I think everyone could do with a little more doubt. What's the word I'm looking for? Epistemic humility about, like, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. This idea of just explaining why this is different, appreciating that just because you understand AI and other people don't, doesn't necessarily one Mean you're smarter than them, although often you are, to be fair or two, that you know everything about everything because of this, this factor. Right. Like, it's hard to imagine this is, you know, this is in my head. So this isn't like anything, but it's hard to imagine. Anthropic. You've been in conversations with people where they're explaining something to you and their tone and approach is so patronizing and like, it just, like, it's just infuriating. And you're like, screw this guy. I.

[A]

Are you describing conversations that you and I have had about various consumer technology that you demand that I adopt and then I stubbornly refuse to.

[B]

Right. And you wanna punch me in the face. So I guess I'd be up. So maybe I can identify this attitude because I can personify it at times. That's a fair pushback. And I think the emailer does have his finger on something. It's. When I was at Microsoft, I remember I never got promoted and I was very frustrated about it. And I ended up on this team where I was actually, I was level 61 and everyone else at the team was level 63. And I was doing all the work. And I'm like, well, you know, I should get. But my feedback was the one piece of feedback I remember getting at my year review or something like that was your what is excellent, your how needs a lot of work. And there was this like, this idea of like, it's not just my manager that has to like me, but like the other managers on the promotion committee and the manager above the manager. And like all those, you know, there's an aspect of corporate politics that is just putting on a happy face and talking to people and selling yourself and your ideas that. This is why I didn't last long at Corporate America. I'm much better off, I think, on my own, to say the least. And there is an aspect here to my feedback to Anthropic is your what is fine. It's the how that needs work. You need to figure out, like how to communicate. How to communicate these things. And the.

[A]

And describe like, there needs to be a capacity for risk tolerance over the next four or five years. And there's not much of that coming from Anthropic. In the course of these conversations, they create the illusion of perfect security as long as they're the ones in charge of that security. And that's going to be a problem long term. I'm open to the possibility that members of the Trump administration just simply don't Understand that you can't keep these models from being jailbroken, and you can't reduce the risks on that front. I will also note, though, like, there was that report in the Washington Post about Anthropic giving the government a list of 111 organizations that had advanced access to Mythos. And then there was an additional 50 or so entities that were added and had already received access. And Anthropic was slow to get that list of companies to the government, as the government was like, who actually has access to Mythos? And. And one of the entities was a South Korean company. And it just. What's interesting in that report is it seems like Anthropic still doesn't understand that the government is ultimately in charge, and it's really not that complicated. Dealing with the government shouldn't be as impossible as Anthropics making it look.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, again, blame belongs on both sides.

[B]

Goes back to the Department of War debate, which ultimately is like, a philosophical question of who's in charge. And the fundamental problem with Anthropic's how is actually not just the how. It's the substance. The. In that debate, their red line was we get to decide how this is used. So you asked earlier for evidence of them saying they should be in charge of AI. There's your example.

[A]

Yeah, fair enough.

[B]

Like, they already demonstrated it. And by the way, you know, we talked about this last week, they've also demonstrated the capability and willingness to silently nerf their models to stop behavior that they don't think is acceptable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so this is the core issue. The. There's an assertion of authority that is reserved solely for them. And it's not just with their customers. It's not just with other companies. It's with the federal government. That is the fundamental issue. So it actually does go back to that episode. And that's the issue here, is they're trying to dictate terms, and the government is probably being dumb. The, like, export control thing, who knows if it's even legal or whatever it might be? That's for, like, the courts to decide. My guess is probably not right. But what's actually happening is the exact same battle that was happening before. Who gets final say and.

[A]

And when the government says jump, Anthropic should say how high you want. The additional 50 entities. Here are the additional 50 entities you have a problem with.

[B]

How's that taste, Andrew?

[A]

Well, no, that's just the way it's gonna work. Right.

[B]

No, that's the thing.

[A]

It's inevitable. If you're talking about a super weapon that poses dangers to the entire world like this is the inevitable conclusion of that conversation and they still have not fully groked that.

[B]

And that's what's so frustrating is the people who are implicitly saying they should decide everything seem incapable of understanding the reality of the world as it actually is. And if you can't understand the reality of the world as it actually is, on what basis should I have faith that you get to decide how the world's going to be all right?

[A]

And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the Show Notes or you can also go to SharpTech FM. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week plus lots more great content from Strikery and the Structecary plus bundle. Check it out and if you've got feedback please email us at email at sharptech FM.