The US government Friday lifted its block on Anthropic’s powerful Claude Mythos 5 AI model, allowing the company to release it to more than 100 US institutions, including major companies and government agencies.
The decision, in a letter sent Friday afternoon to Anthropic, is a major de-escalation in the confrontation between the Trump Administration and one of the world’s most valuable private companies. Two weeks ago the administration imposed export controls on Mythos, leading to a shut down of the model and its cousin Fable 5 after warnings from Amazon and other companies that they could be “jailbroken” for malicious purposes.
The letter is silent on Fable 5, a weaker version of Mythos that was briefly the most powerful AI model widely available to consumers. People close to the talks said they are moving toward releasing Fable as well, though that timeline is unclear.
“I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote to Anthropic’s chief compute officer Tom Brown Friday, citing “significant progress” in the intense, daily talks between the government and the company since the block went into effect.
[...]
Under the new Anthropic arrangement, “a license will no longer be required to export, reexport, or in-country transfer (including deemed exports and reexports) the Claude Mythos 5 Model to entities identified in Annex A to this letter and their foreign national employees, or to Anthropic’s foreign national employees.”
I wonder what the actual story is here? Is this the next step in getting OpenAI and Anthropic bailed out by the government? Did someone realize government software is such garbage they are worried...
I wonder what the actual story is here?
Is this the next step in getting OpenAI and Anthropic bailed out by the government?
Did someone realize government software is such garbage they are worried a LLM could do some damage?
The next Trump grift where he tries to figure out a way to enrich himself by forcing these companies to pay him off, more than they already have been?
OpenAI did in the past. There is no reason to think that Anthropic wouldn't want the same thing. If they can't IPO at the valuation investors need, which increasingly is rumoured to be the case,...
OpenAI did in the past. There is no reason to think that Anthropic wouldn't want the same thing. If they can't IPO at the valuation investors need, which increasingly is rumoured to be the case, then the next thing to do is convince everyone that your model is so amazing and dangerous the government needs to invest money to keep it from "falling in the wrong hands", etc.
I think there’s a simpler explanation? People—or at least the executives at many companies involved—believe these models are quite powerful and want to justify government controls so they have...
I think there’s a simpler explanation?
People—or at least the executives at many companies involved—believe these models are quite powerful and want to justify government controls so they have access to them before competitors do. Business as usual; capital building moats with regulatory capture!
The stated goal of having only a limited release of Mythos was to allow defenders to patch security bugs in important software before attackers get a chance to exploit them. I think that still...
The stated goal of having only a limited release of Mythos was to allow defenders to patch security bugs in important software before attackers get a chance to exploit them. I think that still applies?
I suppose you can twist that into “have access before competitors do” but it depends on what kind of competition you mean. We shouldn’t want to be neutral about the arms race between patching security bugs and exploiting them.
From the article:
[...]
I wonder what the actual story is here?
Is this the next step in getting OpenAI and Anthropic bailed out by the government?
Did someone realize government software is such garbage they are worried a LLM could do some damage?
The next Trump grift where he tries to figure out a way to enrich himself by forcing these companies to pay him off, more than they already have been?
Nobody's asking for a bailout. Why bring that up?
OpenAI did in the past. There is no reason to think that Anthropic wouldn't want the same thing. If they can't IPO at the valuation investors need, which increasingly is rumoured to be the case, then the next thing to do is convince everyone that your model is so amazing and dangerous the government needs to invest money to keep it from "falling in the wrong hands", etc.
When did OpenAI ask for a bailout?
Mostly this
I think there’s a simpler explanation?
People—or at least the executives at many companies involved—believe these models are quite powerful and want to justify government controls so they have access to them before competitors do. Business as usual; capital building moats with regulatory capture!
The stated goal of having only a limited release of Mythos was to allow defenders to patch security bugs in important software before attackers get a chance to exploit them. I think that still applies?
I suppose you can twist that into “have access before competitors do” but it depends on what kind of competition you mean. We shouldn’t want to be neutral about the arms race between patching security bugs and exploiting them.
Marketing and grift.