← The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
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Today on the AI Daily Brief as the workweek starts without resolution, the Fable 5 crisis continues. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Alright friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG Section assembly and Outsystems. To get an ad free version of the show, go to patreon.com aidaily brief or you can subscribe at Apple Podcasts. And if you want to learn more about sponsoring the show, send us a Note@sporsidailybrief.AI Today we are picking up where we left off in the chaotic saga of Anthropic versus the White House around Fable five. For those just getting up to speed, on Friday night the United States issued an Export Control Directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to any foreign nationals. Given the breadth of that order, the only choice that Anthropic had, in their estimation, was to take the model down entirely. Now, the first phase, in the absence of better information, was stunned reactions and everyone casting about for who to blame. And while there might have been some partisans for either the Anthropic side or the US Government side, candidly no one was looking all that great. I did an emergency episode on Saturday morning and subsequent to that we started to get a little bit more information, both in the form of narrative construction as well as in the form of reporting. The first important post came from former AI czar David Sachs, who wrote, I've had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true. As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable. Fable is Mythos with guardrails, but if those guardrails fail, then you've exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn't have them. Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyber weapon and needed to be regulated as such. They ask for government regulation of Mythos and champion the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability, big or small, it is Anthropic's responsibility to patch. A highly credible, trusted partner of both Anthropic and the US Government who is testing Fable, came forward with a jailbreak of these guardrails. The admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or deeploy the model. Dario refused. In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn't serious. That is not what the trusted partner in the US government believes. Nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic's brand. As the AI safety company, it's difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not serious. In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety. In reaction, the admin issued the export control. The admin did this reluctantly. It's been very surprised that Anthropic hasn't wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request that is fixing the jailbreak issue. Anthropic's reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research company. The admin's hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and fable goes back into general release. The admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn't wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority. Finally, those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior Dow Anthropic issues are wrong. The admin values Anthropic's technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic's court now. Everyone saw that, everyone shared it, and everyone had something to say about it. There were some who took sax at face value. There were many more who viewed this as an act of narrative construction more than anything else. And some were just outright skeptical entirely. AI entrepreneur Eric Voorhees responded more likely story the jailbreak wasn't super serious, a situation anyone who has ever received bug reports is familiar with. Anthropic thought the demand to halt the model was absurd and the federal government used the opportunity to punish and humiliate Anthropic for the prior sins of not bending the knee. Anthropic has more credibility on such topics than Washington. Now, if we take Sacks Post as the modern day equivalent of a press release, there are a few things worth noting. First, Sachs in numerous cases paints Anthropic as hypocritical, not only in that they're the safety company and not taking a safety issue seriously, but that they had marketed Mythos Weapon as a cyber weapon and then were surprised when it needed to be Regulated as such, Sachs paints the administration as being reluctant to kneecap Anthropic and in my estimation, paints two ways out of the situation. The first is in that second to last line. The admin feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. This is basically saying the ball is in Anthropic's court. In other words, Anthropic resolved this and we can move on. So what's the second way out of this? I don't think it should pass our notice when Sachs stops talking about Anthropic and starts specifically talking about Daario Amade himself. The admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or dedeploy the model. Dario refused. Now, so far, no calls from the administration for Dario's resignation have come, although certainly that's been a subtext of some investor conversations and one strand of discourse on the Internet. But by specifically targeting out Dario, I do think Sachs is at least a little bit setting him up as a potential sacrificial lamb. Now, Anthropic specific position restated from their Friday blog post, while not giving details of the specific jailbreak they said, are basically arguing that the jailbreak that was shared with them was specific and discreet rather than universal. And universal jailbreaks are what's really important in language that was basically guaranteed to not help the situation. Anthropic went out of its way to talk about perfect jailbreak resistance, not appearing to be possible today. Still, the key thing as we try to understand what the administration saw is Anthropic is basically saying that not all jailbreaks imply the same level of risk. Just because one narrow jailbreak is successful doesn't mean there's the ability to remove all guardrails. Think back to what these guardrails actually were. They were blocking everything from basic questions about mitochondria to any prompt with the word cancer. If you manage to get the model to tell you that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, that's technically a jailbreak. However, it's also completely different to being able to use the model to build a bioweapon. But what about this highly credible trusted partner? As I was finishing recording on Saturday morning, there were the first indications of who that trusted partner was. With that information getting filled out throughout the day, multiple outlets reported that Amazon was the unnamed trusted partner that reported the jailbreak to the US Government. Axios reports that Amazon contacted administration officials on Thursday night to share the issue. Using the precise source language reported by Axios, the report showed, quote, how they were able to jailbreak and access portions of Anthropic's powerful new Mythos model that pose a national security threat. Sources said at Anthropic that they had notified the government multiple times prior to the June 9 release and and there were no objections. However, Axios reports that senior admin officials fielded calls from at least five other companies across Thursday night and Friday morning. This led officials to make the decision to shut down Fable, Contacting Anthropic at 1pm on Friday, Anthropic sources said they received notice that they had 90 minutes to take down Fable and Mythos due to a, quote, national security threat. But the source also said that Anthropic received no details about the nature of the threat at that time. At 5:30, Anthropic received formal notice that Fable and Mythos would be subject to export controls that barred access to all foreign nationals. Around 10pm Anthropic complied by taking down the two models. Anthropic sources said that Dario Amade and other executives spoke with the administration after that 5:30 notification. According to the account provided to Axios, they laid out that the jailbreak was fairly simple, could be achieved with other models, and did not demonstrate a flaw with Fable's guardrails. Now, while Axios had mentioned the administration receiving a number of other calls, at least based on the best reporting that we have so far, it does seem like the decision to impose export controls was based pretty much solely on the Amazon report. Despite those multiple tech companies placing calls to the administration, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy appears to have been the central figure. The Wall Street Journal reports that the decision to shut Fable 5 down was made after conversations between Jassy and key officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. Amazon, for their part, aren't saying much, with a spokesperson stating, as a leading cloud provider that serves a large number of private and public sector customers, it's not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks when they occur. We don't share details of these discussions. The journal included numerous details about the contents of the report sourced to Andrew Morris, the founder of cybersecurity firm Gray Noise Intelligence. Reportedly, Amazon's researchers were able to use a jailbreak to make Fable discuss security bugs in at least four software platforms. Morris commented that this is information that would typically be blocked by the guardrails, but was, quote, still a long way from dangerous cybersecurity information. He noted that many other AI models can surface the same information. The key difference that made Mythos a unique security risk was supposedly the ability to translate these vulnerabilities into functional exploit code. Now, Morris said that Amazon researchers had not presented evidence that they'd been able to get Fable to produce this type of code, which is blocked by the guardrails. There's also suggestion that the administration misinterpreted how severe the issue was, writes the WSJ. Jassy's calls to administration officials were viewed by some as a general warning that quickly escalated into a wide Commerce Department ban on foreign users accessing Mythos and Fable. Now Politico added further details about exactly who took part in the decision making process. They wrote that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and White House Cyber Director Sean Cairncross were the key administration figures leading the meeting where the decision was made. Besant was apparently so critical to the AI policy decision that he joined the meeting remotely en route to an event in Houston. After the meeting, White House sources said they attempted to reach Dario Amadei but were told he was unavailable because he was attending a wellness retreat. There is, as we will see, a lot of contention about that particular point. White House sources said that Amadei called the White house at around 1pm but anthropic rejected this version of events, stating it was absolutely false. They noted that Amade was first requested around noon and was on the phone within an hour and 15 minutes. The company made other senior leaders available in the interim. Once Amadei was available, he participated in three phone calls with around half a dozen officials. In addition to Besant, Wiles and Cairncross, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick participated in the calls, together with a handful of other senior Commerce and White House staff. Now, at this point, it's worth noting that President Trump's name hasn't been mentioned on the list of decision makers. The only mention of Trump's involvement came from the Wall Street Journal writing, President Trump later signed off on the action despite reservations about its hindering innovation. As we will see, I think at this point President Trump himself is basically the only primarily innovation concerned actor in the White House anymore. During the calls Rights Politico, Amadei tried to clear up what he assumed was a misunderstanding. He pushed back on the administration's concerns defending the guardrails and argued that the type of bypass that occurred, which he believed to be specific, did not pose the same risk as a broader jailbreak that would allow it to be used without any of the guardrails put in place by Anthropic. Karen Cross and Besant were reportedly unconvinced by the argument. One White House official said that Amazon's findings were run past the nsa, leading Karen Cross and Bessant to feel that they had, quote unquote proof. Government officials urged Anthropic to voluntarily withdraw the model and coordinate with the government to address vulnerabilities. Amade reportedly requested more time and more information, but refused to commit to taking down the model. Besson at one stage warned Amade that he was making a bad decision. In a statement quoted to Politico, one senior White House official said export controls were a last resort after begging them for hours to work with us. This was not something we wanted to do, but our hands were tied. Anthropic again disputed this version of events, with one source close to the company commenting, the White House gave 90 minutes to take the model down with no details on the actual threat. There was never any begging or asking for them to work with us, just a declared 90 minute deadline. Now three White House officials commenting on the story said that Amazon wasn't the only company to raise concerns, but they didn't name the others, according to Politico sources. In fact, it seemed like Anthropic's attitude was a deciding factor. The crux of the issue was the lack of seriousness that Anthropic was applying to it. Had Anthropic taken it seriously and rather than dismissing it as isolated, move to fix or pause access, this never would have happened.
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There is nothing to suggest this is a wholesale jailbreak of the safety measures. There is thus nothing for Anthropic to actually resolve with the behavior of the model. It is entirely down to politics. AI policy Reacher Miles Brundage wrote, Sounds like some folks at the White House were unaware that Fable has greater than zero cyber abilities, so thought something unsurprising was surprising. Dario rightly thought this was a misunderstanding. No one in government who knew what was going on was looped in or could stop it and people outside egged it on. Part of the issue, as Colin Cameron puts it. Lots of knowledgeable White House tech people left pointing out who Dario participated in calls with. On the White House side, Colin argues the White House are way out of their depth. Miles Brundage again later writes, there's been zero indicating that domain experts at CAISI or NSA were involved. All reporting points to senior White House officials and in that context, what Anthropic thought was calm, rational explanation clearly came off as not taking the issue seriously. Remember, one of POLITICO's White House sources said the crux of the issue was the lack of seriousness that Anthropic was applying to it. Now we are clearly getting two very different versions of events from Friday, one from the White House and one from Anthropic. One detail that seems to be most at odds is whether Dario was actually at a wellness retreat. Tech reporter Ashley Vance gave his account writing, none of this was some weeks long back and forth. I was at Anthropics HQ on Friday reporting when all this unfolded. Dario is not at a wellness retreat. The Feds seem to be scrambling to try and make an example of Anthropic. Again, this is not technical, it's petty. Later, Ashley continued, the Feds don't like Dario Amadei because he won't do all their bidding. And so now we've entered the Soviet style propaganda portion of the program with the White House feeding every reporter it can find with laughable claims like Dario is unreachable at a wellness retreat. Come on. I'd hoped the US would not be self defeating on AI since it's kind of one of the last hopes the US has versus China. But here we are already Speaking about the wellness retreat point, Jeff Cafe writes this seemingly minor detail included by the White House is what Scott Adams would have called a linguistic kill shot, a simple sticky idea that immediately generates a visual in anyone hearing the phrase. Nobody can think about this story without picturing Dario like this. The meme that he is pointing to is Dario in a bathrobe with two cucumbers on his eyes as someone leans over and gives him the news. Now from there it just got weirder. On Saturday afternoon we got an entirely alternate explanation that it was in fact China all along. Washington Insider publication Semaphore wrote the White House imposed export controls on Anthropic's powerful Mythos AI model, partly over suspicions that a China linked group had accessed it, a person familiar with the matter said. Now beyond that, the article contained almost zero new details. Continuing, it's unclear how the White House learned of the issue, which organization accessed the model, and how it gained access to Mythos. But if the Chinese government had access to Mythos, it could pose national security risks to the U.S. china could also attempt to reverse engineer and copy the model in a process known as distillation. An Anthropic spokesperson commented that the White House didn't raise any concerns about China during the discussions and also noted that anthropic models are already blocked in China. Ashley Vance Again, quick someone say it was China, but it's really well sourced, right? Well, there was a person familiar adding more fuel to the fire that this was actually personal and about the White House's antipathy towards Pete Hegseth despite David Sachs saying that it wasn't. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted:3 months ago, Department of War kicked Anthropic out of our building forever. Every passing day proves why that was the right move. And at this point I would argue that even if we find it abhorrent and distasteful, that policy this consequential is being made on the basis of whether people with different political opinions like each other or not. The reality is that in this moment, the world that we actually live in right now, we don't have the privilege of just sitting back and finding that abhorrent and nor importantly do Anthropic. Axios published a follow up article this morning called Quoting an administration Official saying they screwed us. The article was titled Personality Clashes sent Anthropic's Models offline. Axios quotes a source familiar with the administration's thinking saying Anthropic has not done a great job at trying to speak to the administration and appreciate the ideological differences. It's likely they just speak in different languages. Another source from around the administration argued that the admin viewed Anthropic's position at the outset as no, we're not going to do anything about it. This is not a real issue. For some, the real politic is very obvious here, buco Capital Bloke wrote. Much of the tech community is exposing themselves for not understanding the absolute basics of political theory. The US government has a monopoly on the use of force. A private citizen cannot speak the way Dario speaks. He will have to change his messaging or be destroyed. Sirtechery's Ben Thompson wrote a long post this morning called Anthropic Safety Superpower. In it he made what I believe is a salient point about this. He basically said that all of the things that people have been critical about Fable for over the last week or so for Anthropic simply come down to safety. The change in the data retention policy, the guardrails, everything was about safety. Thompson writes. Here's the thing about these safety justifications. I think they work because to Anthropic they aren't justifications. The company really believes that they are the only ones who believe in superintelligence and thus are the only ones who are sufficiently concerned about the dangers that excuses decision after decision, policy after policy, and confrontation after confrontation. That to people on the outside looks like a bizarre combination of cynicism and naivety. Ben concludes, I respect this alignment and I fear it. I respect it because it is so clearly effective. The closest analogy is probably Apple, which has framed every self serving action in the guise of doing right by users and often they were so it is with Anthropic. What I fear, however, is that it is one thing to have people convinced they know best building a smartphone that I can take or leave. It's considerably more concerning to have them building superintelligence that has the potential to rival or exceed the power of nation states or merely massive corporations. The history of brilliant people convinced they know what humanity needs is a sordid one, precisely because they have convinced themselves that their intentions are good, justifying actions that very much are not. I personally have seen this sort of thing up close and personal before, and to the extent that Ben is right, I believe that anytime people start convincing themselves that they are the only ones who are sufficiently concerned about something and the only ones who know the right remedy, things tend to get very bad very quickly. And as Thompson points out, the implications of all that are radically amplified because of the power inherent in the situation. RSI senior fellow Adam Terrier argues that when push comes to shove, as interesting as it might be to debate whatever got us here, the policy is disastrous, adam writes, because this is happening too anthropic. The temptation for many will be to say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They have relentlessly raised the regulatory temperature in Washington by inviting far reaching controls of frontier models. They made this bet and now they have to lay in it. But this decision by the Trump administration should not be judged on a desire for payback politics, but on the merits and specifically what it means for America's broader AI objectives. In that regard, this action is truly outrageous. How exactly is the government planning on even going about verifying everyone who uses this specific model to ensure compliance? That alone raises huge flags between the latest executive order shifting more control to NSA and this recent chatter about quasi nationalization and equity stakes, and now this action. We are talking about a significant escalation in the politicization of AI and centralization of control over advanced computation in this country. And this is all being done by an administration that had previously made acceleration in winning the great AI race a priority. We're moving backwards now. In a companion blog post, Adam wrote, a leading USAI company was forced to take down a product that millions were using based on non public, unexplained concerns of a few government officials. This isn't the red tape risk of the fda. It's more like the FDA demanding out of the blue and without explanation that everyone stop drinking milk if milk was 50% of last year's stock market gains. Now, at the time of recording, which is right around 9:00am Eastern Time on Monday, everything is still in the air. Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic had dispatched a slew of senior staff to D.C. trying to resolve the issue. Most of the article was just a rehashing of everything we already know, but we got a handful of names of who Anthropic sent to dc, writes the journal. Anthropic sent senior technical staff to Washington, including top security researchers Nicholas Carlini, Logan Graham, who leads the team that evaluates models for risks, and David Orr, the company's head of safeguards. They will meet with security experts from the government in hopes of de escalating the conflict, said people familiar with the meetings. Now it's been so little time that we're only just starting to see a public response. On Sunday, a group of cybersecurity leaders led by former Facebook chief security officer Alex Damos published an open letter pushing on the administration. Dear Secretary Lutnick and National Cyber Director Cairn Cross, they wrote, we the undersigned executives and technical leaders from across the United States write to you to ask you to lift the export control directives on Anthropics Fable and Mythos LLMs and commit to an open, scientific and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments in the future. Their argument is basically that other models are good at this stuff as well, that the multiple protections that they've built in are pretty good, that it's essential that researchers have access to those tools so they can harden their own defenses with them, and that Chinese open weight models are only months behind. Now, this particular letter isn't necessarily getting a ton of reach, but I will be watching to see whether there are other sorts of responses that come up around this as well. Ultimately, from as far as I can tell from outside, the resolution to this is like it or not, the resolution to this is not going to primarily be technical. It's going to be interpersonal. Anthropic has up until now clearly thought that they could simply reason with the White House and make them see things as Anthropic does. That is clearly not the case. And whether they wanted to be in this position or not, Anthropic can no longer play the scrappy startup. They are one of two leaders in the most consequential industry, certainly for the economy, if not the larger world as well. And they've got to play ball with the government. They have, not just the government they'd like. Responding to news about Anthropic's senior technical staff going to Washington investor Melinda Chu. If Dario Amadei is not on the plane, nothing will change. Now, it is highly likely by the time you are watching this, it'll be out of date. But of course we'll be back with another update very soon. For now, that's going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Appreciate you listening or watching as always. Until next time, peace.