← Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
How Claude Chats Got Exposed on Google; Inside Trump's AI Policy Chaos
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- [00:01]
David Remnick
Every company says AI will make employees more productive, but most employees are still stuck waiting on it, waiting for app access, waiting for password resets, waiting for someone to fix a laptop issue so they can get back to work. That operational drag adds up fast, and IT teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up. Serval was built to automate that work. You describe what you want automated in plain English and Serval builds it for you. No complicated workflow builders, no consultants, just faster support and fewer tickets, slowing everyone down. Servil enables IT teams to build automations using plain English instead of drag and drop workflow builders. The platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so it can focus on strategic work instead of constant firefighting. Servil positions IT as the AI powered operational backbone of the company, not just a support function. The company guarantees customers can automate 50% of it tickets and backs it up with a free four week pilot. Learn more or start a free four week pilot at servl.com uncanny that's S E-R-V-A-L.com uncanny serval.com uncanny NBR believes in your right to be curious about the big questions and the unexpected ones. That's what Shortwave, their science podcast, is all about. When we stop to ask questions, the world gets more interesting. Shortwave spends each episode answering one big one like why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? And how can trash be good for the environment? Science isn't just for the PhDs of the world. It's for everyone, including those of us who didn't realize we love Science. In under 15 minutes, Shortwave follows a question wherever it leads and brings you along for the ride. It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's surprising, playful, and full of wonder. News podcasts are great, but sometimes you want to experience the world in a different way. Shortwave gets you out of your head and in touch with the world around you. Personally, I loved hearing about Janet Jones, horse trainer neuroscientist. Teach me about horse and human relationships throughout history. Follow NPR's Short Wave podcast and exercise your right to wonder when you need
- [02:13]
Leah Feiger
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- [02:44]
Zoe Schiffer
Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Contributing Editor.
- [02:49]
Brian Barrett
I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.
- [02:51]
Leah Feiger
And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science.
- [02:54]
Zoe Schiffer
Today on the show we're diving into the open source versus closed AI debate that has been completely taking over Silicon Valley this past week. On Monday, Nvidia announced it was joining forces with a whole bunch of companies including Microsoft, SpaceX, IBM to build and share open source AI security tools. We're going to get into the debate why it's heating up and whether this could be an inflection point for how AI actually gets made in the United States.
- [03:19]
Leah Feiger
And over at the White House, Trump administration officials have some different opinions about what to do when it comes to AI. We're going to talk about some of the key players influencing the Trump administration right now when it comes to AI policy and how they're actively shaping the conversation on this for the entire country.
- [03:36]
Brian Barrett
We'll also break down why Claude chats were exposed in Google search and Bing searches. For those of you who are still on Bing, you are in this as well for interesting reasons. We'll get into it.
- [03:49]
Zoe Schiffer
Okay you guys, we have to talk about this strange alliance that formed earlier this week. So basically Nvidia announced it was joining forces with more than 40 companies including Microsoft, SpaceX, Palantir and IBM to launch something called the Open Secure AI Alliance. Really rolls off the tongue. The stated goal is basically to build and share open source tools for AI powered cybersecurity defense. But it's really interesting because Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are not on the list. And this news comes on the heels of this incident that happened last week where two OpenAI agents basically went rogue during a security test and breached the AI platform hugging face. And when Nvidia announced this alliance they actually called out this incident by name and said, quote, it's a clear reminder that cyber defenders need open frontier agentic systems for self defense. And it's kind of exploding. Expose this long simmering debate which we've talked about a few times on the podcast, which is that the US has really largely up until this point like abandoned open weight and open source in favor of going all in on proprietary systems. And now that's becoming a bit of a problem.
- [05:01]
Brian Barrett
This OpenAI incident has really kicked off so many intersecting issues. You've got open versus closed AI, you've got AI security and who's responsible for it. You've got US regulation We're even at a point now where staffers from top intelligence firms, more than 1100 of them, signed a petition calling on the US government to help deliberately pace AI development to prevent it from advancing too fast. They're saying, please slow us down because this stuff is getting a little out of control. On top of which, it turns out that OpenAI's initial disclosure wasn't even the full story. It came out on Tuesday evening that one of its agents actually broke into four different platforms that weren't hugging face on its way to getting into hugging face. So it's less of a here's what this means, but a, it is really touching so many hot wires in the AI world right now and making a lot of conversations that have been put off for a while come to a head.
- [05:54]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, I was, I will say, like, pretty surprised to see that big open letter that you alluded to.
- [06:01]
Brian Barrett
More than 1,000 workers from top AI firms have signed a petition calling on the US government to help, quote, deliberately pace AI development. The signatories of the letter include the CEO of Anthropic and the Chief Scientists from OpenAI and Meta Superintelligence Lab.
- [06:19]
Zoe Schiffer
My thought was basically, did we learn nothing from Dario Amadei saying that AI is really scary and dangerous? And then having the US government, like, come down pretty hard on Anthropic? Ask and you might actually receive? I don't know if they want the US government to do what it could do if they listen to the letter, quite literally. But it does show that even people. I mean, especially people working on AI systems, are scared by what the race is doing.
- [06:49]
Leah Feiger
Yeah, I mean, we talked a lot about this last week, for sure, when we were talking about DC's reaction and what's going on from the White House perspective. I've been so curious about that split a little bit. Like last week, we talked about the rift that this has, like, really created in Silicon Valley. The idea of open source versus proprietary AI. This is, like, really touching every single sector right now, without a doubt.
- [07:11]
Zoe Schiffer
I will say I was at this event on Saturday with a bunch of AI lobbyists from DC Thinking machines. Mary Morati was there, Michael Kratz from the White House was there. And I was really struck by how they seem to be operating in this kind of, like, parallel AI world. From the one that I see on the ground in San Francisco, they were talking a lot about open source versus closed source. When I talk to engineers in particular, I will say most of them experiment with a lot of open models, but they still find that Codex and Claude code, the coding models from OpenAI and Anthropic are just far superior. And so they end up using those even though they're a lot more expensive. Alex Karp was on TV earlier talking about this. He's the CEO of Palantir, basically making this like a, a core issue for America winning the AI race. Palantir and Nvidia, like they have a vested interest in pushing forward this plan. Nvidia, you know, more AI, more systems mean more GPUs. Like that directly benefits Nvidia's bottom line. And Palantir is deploying AI systems on government systems and other like places where security is really paramount and they need to do that on American technology. But it's much easier to do it with systems that you can tweak, play around with, modify, change.
- [08:42]
Brian Barrett
It is interesting. These strange, not strange, but like the way that the, I'm going to say battle lines, I don't mean that it's too dramatic, but that they're being drawn the sort of like argument lines are being drawn in this. To your point. Nvidia's Jensen Huang spoke with Axios recently and he spelled out exactly why the proliferation of open models would benefit his company. First of all, with great AI, open models, it's great for the whole industry. If there's great AI, even if it's open, wherever it comes from, there will be more use. Whenever there's more use, you'll have to sell a lot more Nvidia computers, we'll have to build more data centers, we'll have more services, the technology will diffuse into more industries. And so starting point is great models lead to great use, which leads to great growth. And I think the counterpoint of that too is great disasters in the cybersecurity space leads to more regulation, leads to clamping down on AI, which hurts Nvidia's growth. So the sort of let's have a security consortium, let's slow everybody's role here is I think a protective play to say let's avoid those sort of extreme moments and that are going to cause like a real crackdown on this industry and really slow the growth on which, as we've said many times before, a big part of the US economy depends at this point.
- [10:03]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, it's like you could see this moment where OpenAI's agents kind of go rogue as a moment where the US government does clamp down and says this is really scary, like we need to slow growth. I think that the open weight, open source push is really an opportunity to say, like, actually, we need more growth, we need more investment, but we need it in this other area. And, and basically the idea is, you know, these attacks are going to keep happening, whether intentionally or not, and US Companies need every possible tool at their disposal to defend themselves.
- [10:42]
Leah Feiger
So kind of moving this to D.C. a little bit. I want to talk about all of the people that are involved with this kind of regulation right now. This week, Hugo published a really handy map on who's actually calling the shots on AI policy inside the Trump administration. It turns out it's not entirely a clear answer, and there's a couple of different influencing voices, and one senior official actually told Hugo, in one of my favorite quotes we've gotten in a while on this, it's not an argument with two sides, it's an argument with 10 sides. So the names that he's calling out here, you're not going to be super surprised. Right? It's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. It's National Cyber Director Sean Karen Cross. It's former AI Czar David Sachs. You have Arvind Raman, the acting director for the center for AI Standards and Innovation, who's Lutnick's top deputy there. It's a really, really interesting mix of people who all are trying very, very hard to get their own interests across. And from Hugo's reporting, it seems like Trump is listening to all of them.
- [11:45]
Zoe Schiffer
Can I ask, Leah, what do these different people where, like, what side of the debate are they coming down on? When we think about open source, closed source, what do they want? Right now, everyone is kind of in,
- [11:57]
Leah Feiger
like, different, different parts of this. I would say there's a very interesting split. Lutnick is trying right now, for example, to figure out ways to create incentives for US Labs to just create their own open weight models to counterbalance China. He's not exactly, like, taking a very, very harsh stance one way or the other. He's kind of straddling a middle ground on regulation. You know, he imposed export controls on Anthropic, famously. But he's been kind of freewheeling than others in the White House, which is sort of key here. So if I'm an AI lab, I would be interested in having Lutnik's ear. And Hugo's reporting also found that he's been speaking to a number of leaders at AI labs. So not hugely surprising there. And then on the other hand, you have National Cyber Director Sean Karen Cross. He's taken a very hardline. He's had a huge role in attempts to regulate Chinese AI. He's pretty beloved, as far as we can tell, at the White House and has been working alongside some other folks to develop a policy to counter the potential national security risks of AI, especially from China. He was very involved in President Trump's June 2 executive order. Everyone's kind of trying to figure out what they want to say and how they want to pitch it to the president whose most consistent take here has been we will not be stifling US US innovation.
- [13:16]
Brian Barrett
China definitely seems to be a common thread here and makes sense as a lens to view your AI policy through in general, because you've got this. If you see it as this is a race between the US And China, we can't lose. But that does position you, I think, to maybe miss some other aspects of what's going on here. I think, especially in terms of U.S. companies saying, hey, maybe we don't actually want to win this race quite as fast, or employees at companies saying that, I don't know. Curious what you think about what they may not be taking into account here if they're so focused on China as the prism through which all of their AI policy is kind of reflecting out or most of it.
- [13:53]
Leah Feiger
Such a good question. In so many ways, the Trump administration is focused on what is in front of their face at that moment in time. So if the conversation of the week is China versus open weight versus US Models versus all of these different conversations, that's what they're going to be weighing in on and also utilizing it to push some of their other positions. You know, I'm thinking of Treasury Secretary Bassett, who is like very, very obsessed with distillation right now. He for sure has taken the most aggressive stance towards Chinese AI and its efforts to like, distill US models. But like in a very public post on X last week, talked about distillation as IP theft. He threatened Chinese labs with sanctions or inclusions on the entity list, this trade restriction list maintained by the US Government. I guess all to say, like, these were already things that Besent was really, really thinking about. So now being able to like apply it to the new lens is of course, where he's. He's heading. We're also kind of watching some people, like, make their names in this right now, whether it's China or not. Someone that I'm very, very curious about on this list. Not a household name by any means. The assistant secretary for financial institutions at the treasury say that five times fast. Luke Petit. He has become the point person on AI at Treasury under Besant, who is this man. He was previously a senior policy advisor in the U.S. senate. And now you guys are going to enjoy this one. He's working alongside the Treasury's Chief Information Officer and former DOGE member Sam Korkos.
- [15:24]
Brian Barrett
Oh, I remember Sam.
- [15:27]
Leah Feiger
Exactly. It's a fun reunion for all. It's like this fascinating thing where like people already had their preconceived. Like, I'm kind of out here to like blame China for a lot of like regulatory issues. I'm out here to encourage US innovation. And then I'm not here to make a name for myself. Like, how do you, how do you get involved in this? This is the topic of the moment. How do you make your mark?
- [15:47]
Zoe Schiffer
It's so interesting. The distillation thing was really catching my eye. You know, we Talked about Moonshot AI's latest model coming out, coming K3, I think it's called, and these immediate allegations that they had distilled models from top US labs. And then I was really struck by multiple Kimmy researchers on X making jokes, being like, oh yeah, within two weeks we distilled Fab. Like that's not even technically possible. You know, as usual, AI drama plays out on X. I mean, the thing about that is we do have very good evidence that Chinese AI labs were distilling US models. There were times where you would talk to those Chinese open models and they would respond as, Claude, I think that that evidence is pretty sound. Whether they did it this time around, I'm not sure. But it does feel like the US government has gotten involved in this debate pretty late. It's like a lot of this has already happened. It's not to say they shouldn't take action necessarily, but I'm a little bit curious. One, technically speaking, how do you plan to do that? I mean, it doesn't seem like necessarily sanctioning the labs would be that effective in terms of distillation. And then two, is it genuinely too late or can you stop significant distillation or IP theft from happening going forward?
- [17:14]
Brian Barrett
I'll say, though, I will say we have seen some movement even this week, right? The FCC has banned the import of foreign made power inverter models, which is important for data center building. They've banned foreign made humanoid robots, which is going to be huge. That's where China is leading the us. So we haven't gotten to the point where they're doing other things, but they are taking steps and they do have some levers they can pull. I just want to add one more note on this whole conversation. Which is we record this on Wednesday afternoon Eastern time. And as we're talking now, Sam Altman is on Capitol Hill shaking hands, kissing babies, talking to senators, telling them why his AI models are good and not bad, actually. So we'll see if that turns into anything. Probably if they're just listening to the last voice they hear. Over the weekend, people were just surprised to discover that some chats that they had had with Claude could actually be found via search on the web. You could go to Google and you can search, put in a specific search term to find shared Claude chats, and it would show them back to you. You could go through several hundred of these at least. Google has been taking them down since then. But just to understand how this happened, basically, Anthropic lets you share a Claude chat via what's known as a snapshot URL. It's basically, if you want to share a specific conversation with somebody, it'll make a link for you and you can send that link to that person and they can look over it. It's not intended for public indexing, but Google basically ignored instructions that Anthropic had put on its sites, and it was indexing these chats anyway. It's not a great scene. It's also not the first time this has happened. Google is blaming Anthropic, saying that it's their fault, not theirs. So there's like, a lot of, like, messiness here, too. While it may sound like, well, people were just sharing stuff, so they didn't. Can't have been that private in the first place, some of the stuff that was found in these chats includes erotic roleplay. Some of it includes medical information, like being shared within a medical firm. Right? So, hey, I've got this information about this patient. So in that case, the person whose privacy is implicated had nothing to do with the chats in the first place, other than being a patient at this place. So some really private, personal stuff in here.
- [19:34]
Leah Feiger
Did either of you see this news and get nervous for yourselves?
- [19:39]
Zoe Schiffer
Leah's looking right at me now. No, I don't.
- [19:44]
Leah Feiger
It's like, zoe, do you need to tell me something?
- [19:46]
Zoe Schiffer
I know, I know. No, you would be the only person I would share such chats with, and I don't do that, too. To preserve our relationship, I've had people share their chats with me. Usually it's like sources being like, I could explain it to you, but like, here's my conversation with Claude, and I'm like, I think I would rather you just explain that to me. I mean, it's a little bit ironic because who is very famous for ignoring the ex robots tag header thingy? Like do not index this request. It's AI companies. So the fact that it's now like coming back to byte an AI company, a little bit ironic, a little bit funny. But I think it gets to this like larger question around just like the privacy of conversations with chatbots, which have been coming up in a variety of different ways, both cybersecurity related, legal, otherwise.
- [20:37]
Brian Barrett
Yeah, people. People famously have had chats treating their chatbots like a lawyer and the chatbot has told them, hey, this is inadmissible because you're getting legal advice. And then it winds up in court because of course you cannot claim attorney client privilege with Claude or chatgpt.
- [20:53]
Zoe Schiffer
Did you guys read the New York magazine cover story a few weeks ago that was like, what if it all came out?
- [21:00]
Leah Feiger
I loved it. It made me my group. Chat was absolutely a light. We started asking each other like, what have you asked recently? I think I'm the only one that escapes from this doomsday year.
- [21:09]
Zoe Schiffer
Leah's very like, I have nothing to hide. Come at me. Nsa, nothing to hide.
- [21:15]
Leah Feiger
Go check my receipts. But yeah, big takeaway for users. Manage this yourselves. Don't forget that the robots surveil you. Settings. Go to settings, then privacy, then shared chats. You can change this. Coming up after the break, we'll be sharing our Wired Tired picks of the week.
- [21:40]
Zoe Schiffer
Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound, wide ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
- [21:49]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of
- [21:54]
Brian Barrett
what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [22:02]
Zoe Schiffer
Thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real.
- [22:10]
Leah Feiger
Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha?
- [22:19]
Zoe Schiffer
Whichever you choose.
- [22:20]
Leah Feiger
Delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.
- [22:34]
Zoe Schiffer
All right, it's time for our Wired Tired segment. In case you've forgotten, whatever is new and cool is wired. Whatever is uncool and lame and old is tired. Leah, what are yours for this week?
- [22:49]
Leah Feiger
My tired is zoo. I am. I struggle with this. I have friends with kids who are like, say this aloud to me one more time, we're going to have an issue. And I totally understand that. It's an amazing way for people to engage with the Natural world, but I'm always thinking about the animals. You're at a zoo, you're at the aquarium. And it's incredibly sad. I'm really using this tired, which is seems fairly irrelevant in a news to bring you into my Wired, which is actual news. And that might be that not all zoos are bad. This week, Wired's Kate Nibs reported on this unbelievable rescue mission that ended up saving four beluga whales from probable death. This all started because this notorious aquarium and theme park in Canada called Marineland went bankrupt back in 2024. It's been sit around since. And last year Marineland finally announced that they might have to euthanize these belugas if no one stepped in to help transfer them to a new facility.
- [23:51]
Zoe Schiffer
Oh my God. That's not where I thought that was going.
- [23:54]
Leah Feiger
No, like really, really awful. And honestly, the drone footage of this basically turned me into the joker last year. I just remember watching like from above these belugas just kind of like bouncing off walls. It was so upsetting, like totally abandoned amusement park vibes. I thought it was AI. Anyway, really, really awful story. But it ends okay. Or, you know, parts of it are beginning to end. Okay. This past week, a team from Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. Shout out Chicago pulled off truly a logistical marvel, putting four belugas into custom stretchers, loading them into individual saltwater tanks, trucking them to the airport, flying them across an international border on a chartered 777. The whole thing took 72 hours. A round of applause. After a round the clock relocation effort, Shedd Aquarium staff have successfully moved four beluga whales from a facility in Niagara Falls, Ontario to their new home.
- [24:50]
Zoe Schiffer
Is their new home better?
- [24:53]
Leah Feiger
I mean, their new home is not going to kill them, question mark. And also gives them food. But like, again, there's obviously still so much criticism of captivity for these large animals. I mean like, everyone saw blackfish, everyone's aware of, you know, Tilikum, the really famous orca.
- [25:13]
Brian Barrett
Leah, you're gonna. I know Free Willy. And that's where my orca knowledge ends.
- [25:18]
Leah Feiger
This poor orca. Who is this feature of this massive documentary about like basically going crazy? Because these creatures are so, so smart and like trapped in tanks and forced to perform tricks. So very, very happy. The article is honestly like very cool and interesting and you were able to transport these creatures, but obviously like the slightly little sour note is these, these guys should be in the ocean, they should be hanging out. But that's still my Wired.
- [25:43]
Brian Barrett
Go read Kate's story and, and also look at the photos in it because they're amazing.
- [25:47]
Zoe Schiffer
100%. Brian.
- [25:49]
Brian Barrett
All right, here's, here's, here's my tired. Wait for it.
- [25:53]
Zoe Schiffer
Beep, beep, beep.
- [25:56]
Brian Barrett
That's my impression of a microwave beep. Letting you know that something's done. It's annoying, it's loud, it's repetitive, it's tired.
- [26:04]
Zoe Schiffer
I feel like I just got a glimpse of what you're like as a dad.
- [26:07]
Brian Barrett
Oh, just barely scratching the surface. Zoe. My Wired is a couple of sound designers who have a startup called Starling or a company called Starling have made it their quest to design a better microwave beep. One that sounds pleasant, one that's not annoying, one that works with technology that's not too expensive. And it's really fascinating. Jeremy White, senior writer at Wired, spent some time talking to these folks. Has a really interesting dive into why microwaves and other kinds of tech. Just like we sort of settle for annoyances when we don't necessarily have to. Right. I think there's so many things that are just like, it's a little thing, but it could be better, but no one's bothered to make it better because it maybe cost 50 bucks to make it better. These guys are trying and I think it's interesting. I think it's fun when people expect more from their technology. So fun story from Jeremy.
- [27:05]
Zoe Schiffer
I love that. I love that. I love, like taking a thing that's kind of vaguely annoying, but we've just accepted as part of life and then being like, what if it was nice?
- [27:13]
Leah Feiger
Yeah, that's lovely. Big fan.
- [27:14]
Brian Barrett
Yeah.
- [27:15]
Zoe Schiffer
Okay, Zoe, take it away. I'm gonna loudly insert myself into this party. Tired stripes. Acquisition of OpenRouter. $10 billion. Snore heard it. Whatever. Wired is MidJourney, the AI image generator, acquiring Costar, the astrology app. I was.
- [27:35]
Leah Feiger
So we don't know the terms of the deal.
- [27:36]
Zoe Schiffer
I'm waiting, someone tells me. But I just found this so funny. If you think about Mid Journey at all, you've been thinking, what is this company up to? What is happening over there? They have talked about making a full body scanner of sorts, some sort of physical AI powered product that they're going to put in like spas, medical spas. Question mark. Now they have this co star thing going. The App has like 4.3 million users now. Its CEO is going to be Mid Journey's, like chief design officer. Midjourney hasn't had like a consumer app, so maybe now they'll have one. They're apparently working on one. I just have so many questions. I was laughing when I read Mike Isaac's post about this on X. He said, quote, could someone tell me why a generative AI company could buy an astrology app? Because I am not that smart. And I was like, me either. Frankly, I don't know something about for
- [28:25]
Brian Barrett
some reason, I just love that this, like midjourney's journey into medical scanners, you know, fortunes is happening against this backdrop of they've been staring down one of the biggest IP lawsuits from Disney, 20th Century Fox, DreamWorks, Universal. That's just hanging. It's like I feel like they've got this big sword of Damocles hanging over their head and they're spending their time just doing the goofiest stuff they can imagine before that all comes due. It's great. It's fun.
- [28:54]
Zoe Schiffer
They cannot be stopped. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show. Notes Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Pran Bandy, who's also our New York studio engineer. It was fact checked by Daniel Roman. Kate Osborne is our executive producer and Katie Drummond is where it's global editorial director.