What Hath Anthropic Wrought?
A Trump Administration previously ardently opposed to any real or perceived interference in AI development has suddenly broken the seals with an executive order and most recently the export control of Anthropic’s newest model, Fable 5. Anthropic made the connection between AI model development and existential cybersecurity threats and that connection has changed the face of AI development.
Anthropic is sitting on top of some of the most powerful pieces of technology in human history and has found a way to get them export controlled. As the internet collectively groans over the Trump Administration’s decision, many of these Tweets are missing two critical points:
- The lack of AI testing and assurance is a direct hinderance to AI innovation
- Export control processes should be understood as AI continues to grow
If we don’t get our arms around ways to test AI and be able to justify why export control decisions like this were made, we will find ourselves in the next cycle of an AI winter.
Anthropic’s gambit of pressing the fear narrative could have ended very differently. Had Anthropic accompanied these claims with announcements that it was funding or had funded a program of rigorous AI testing, it would have cut the government’s actions off before they started. Had Project Glasswing instead been a testing effort rather than a conglomeration of other billion-dollar companies, the Fable 5 story would have ended differently.
The problem is that for too long, AI testing and assurance were seen as red tape, as blockers to innovation. Instead, Anthropic’s own actions have revealed them to be the true definition of AI infrastructure. AI infrastructure, in the hardware sense, is the infrastructure that enables AI models to be trained and used by millions. The fate of Fable 5 is that it is trained but not being used by millions of eager users. Had Anthropic had AI safety and assurance infrastructure in place, this would have been prevented. The ultimate AI enabler.
Fable 5 is the outcome of a fear-based narrative about a product not coupled with testing and assurance. Small wonder that AI users trust more advanced models less than early models that were less accurate. As we’ve built models to be more capable, we’ve ignored the need to ensure they are performing. Not performance in the sense of how many tokens they use or how fast they are. Performance in the sense of testing against edge cases, preventing harms, and protecting national security. If the government is to evaluate AI models, as the Trump executive order states, it must have standardized testing to evaluate all models regardless of maker or input.
Anthropic hath wrought some of the most advanced models to date that are doing amazing things. In that pursuit, it also hath wrought government intervention from a previously non-interventionist Administration. In so doing, it has proven that AI testing and assurance is AI infrastructure and without it, we are assured of unintended consequences.
Read the whole article here: https://binarybreakaway.substack.com/p/what-hath-anthropic-wrought