It's easy to wave this aside as the current administration playing political games. But I don't think there is any reason to assume that the current era of open availability of models is going to continue indefinitely. Do you think that Chinese labs will continue to release open models forever, even why they get to the level that Mythos is at now, and beyond? And do you think that a competent US government would have no interest in regulating and restricting model access in 2 years time, assuming that model capabilities continue to improve? I think we bias towards thinking the status quo is the norm and will continue, but this news invites us to question that assumption and think about different ways the future could go.

This seems to be an administration that is dead set on antagonizing every single part of the world. Either enemy or ally.

No - it's extremely effective.

Do you realize the difference between a 'few people using VPNs + fake IDs at 2-person companies ... vs companies all companies globally not allowed to use tech?

If 'Bank of Montreal' were caught using export controlled technology it could be devastating - so they're not going to be using it along with any little mom and pop shop.

We don't know what the Administration is doing other than 'This is Extremely Heavy Handed' and will have devastating consequences if it goes on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

For all we know there are might be several reasons for that ban e.g.

1) There is an actual security threat and its just simple as that.

2) Someone wants Anthropic to be valued way higher and the companies that have invested in Anthropic already... This ban only validates this product and will move the market in higher valuation of Anthropic due to their model being "so good gov had to ban"

3) Someone doesn't like Anthropic and just wants to shut down its current edge (highly unlikely, if there was no IPO filing in place it could be possible but now the valuation just goes up, same as the 2 As that have invested in them)

4) Someone freaked out that we'll be left out of jobs soon so wants to slow down progress, tbh using fable so far I can tell that a lot of jobs can be made redundant cause of that...

For me the most likely for now is 2, then 1 and then maybe 4.

On June 22 Chatgpt will most likely come out with their new model too, which as I understand will be an answer to mythos. Lets see if the US gov goes the same route.

Nah, SpaceX just IPO'd.

They used this type of language with GPT-2. Le sigh, yawn.

They probably have gotten their PR or in the process, but naturalization requires five years after that, so there must be some still not citizen yet.

But I think my larger points stands: even if we do see Fable access again, this is the beginning of government restriction of LLMs and we are going to see more and more of it. In fact, I would be very surprised if we ever see an open weight model with Mythos capabilities. Chinese labs have been consistently releasing open models 6-12 months behind the frontier. In 6 months we may see them go dark.

Similarly, in the US I think we can expect more and more government restrictions on the strongest LLMs, in ways that may go beyond flimsy checks like uploading a valid US passport. It may not happen this year but I think it will happen eventually.

It still surprises me sometimes that LLMs are just available for _anyone_ to use. Isn't it odd that it turned out this way? When I grew up reading sci-fi I thought AI, if I ever saw it in my lifetime, would be something locked up behind the walls of big corporations and governments. But instead we have all been able to use it for an infinity of banal purposes for $100 a month. This is a strange situation but we have got used to it. But it may not continue that way.

And before either 'aisle' piles on - I'm pretty sure the concern is bipartisan.

There is no way to enforce access of one and not the other, not with the state of tech in the US (and most countries without a great firewall). Bypassing such controls is as easy as a pilfered credit card (or some other american-looking payment method) and a vpn - both trivial to come by.

I’ve wondered this but then wouldn’t a large amount of input now just be AI output from a previous PR/client email/spec document/chat. Training of that would be an issue leading to distillation?

It can be both the most powerful LLM on the market, and have no adoption in critical infrastructure.

https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/chatgpt/op...

Marketing or actual fear? We’ve got 5 and 5.5 out now… he compared 5 to the Manhattan project. AI may one day be an economic Manhattan project but GPT 5 wasn’t it.

It’s a meme because they overdo it.

They don't. LLMs can never become out-of-control superintelligence and everyone working on LLMs knows this (with a few eccentric exceptions).

Why would they sell there services to Palantir and/or to the military then?

I'd say their pecuniary interest is a reason one might plausibly doubt their sincerity, as are their continued efforts to build and sell access to the tools.

> Both OpenAI and Anthropic were founded by people who sincerely believed in the risk of out-of-control superintelligence.

This is not a contradiction.

These things can all be true:

1. That they were afraid of ASI

2. That they continue to be afraid of ASI

3. That they recognize that LLMs aren't in fact a path to ASI

4. That the current models aren't the existential danger they'd have us believe

5. That they're claiming they are because it makes for good marketing

Ironic then, that both companies are in an out-of-control race to create a superintelligence.

What do they stand to gain by fearmongering their models as powerful threats? Clout, funding, fanfare, discussion, limelight, funding, funding, stronger IPO, valuation, funding.

What cybersecurity threshold was crossed by mythos that wasn't already crossed by 4.8/5.5? Crickets from 99% of those who have had access.

Have they pulled the same stunts multiple times before with previous models? Check.

You're blind if you dont think that greed and marketing are behind most things you see and hear about when gigantic corporations are involved.

I don't think anthropic or OAI are evil, but its clear both have contracts/connections with Dod and/or Palantir. Both are powered largely by greed still. If you actually want an example of these sincere founders you think OAI/anthropic are run by... look at Ilya at SSI or something. Please open your eyes and stop spreading your opinions on things you clearly have no clue about.

GPT-2 was too dangerous to be released.

We can argue about sincerity, but I don't think we can argue about utter historical incompetence in assessing the risks. It's one or the other.

Either way the evidence seems to indicate we should not listen to AI companies about the risks of AI. Which is not to say that there aren't risks, just that the dealer is the least credible review.

this means nothing

> Whether you agree or not, we have no reason to believe their statements about risks are insincere.

If you want to be taken seriously, provide data, proof, so that any outside observer can independently come to the same conclusion instead of taking your word for it. Asking people to trust you for [reasons?] and that you somehow for some reason are right and the other is wrong regardless of if they agree or not. This is the imposition of a viewpoint instead of winning your case, which is not a sensible point of view, and definitely not how you influence opinions.

they are more than happy to build the things for themselves

it is all two-faced behavior of the exact kind of manipulators that crave power

The amount of self-confidence and belief it takes to get a company through the funding rounds and burn through borrowed money to rise to the top requires an absurd amount of self-delusion.

Oh please. Do people really believe this or shit like "Don't do evil". Companies get founded by all kind of people and ideals. They all go out the window quickly.

Why are they both rushing to IPO now then?

Why? Because they said it a few times? Then if they know the risk, why do they still making it? Comes out the "some one will do it eventually, better be us 'good' people to do it first" talking point?

See? It is a marketing strategy after all. These all talks, it's all to fit themselves into the "'good' people" narrative. It's a centuries old strategy to shield it's user from responsibilities while luring the support from the stupid.

However, the most harmful damage, which is mass layoffs, is already partially done. This could really kill, a massive genocide even, by making people jobless and potentially incomeless. And it is shown that these tech CEOs, they don't care any bit of that beyond the point "I've already told you so".

"Our product is so good the US had to make it illegal for foreigners" is a hell of a marketing slogan.

Especially outside the US customers are going to be very hesitant to keep adopting LLMs from US companies.

This is quite clearly corporate capture of the white house by a competitor influencing policy, but it's hard to imagine something that plays more into anthropic's hand. They now own the model that was so good the US government made them shut it off.

Or maybe Anthropic isn't playing chess at all - these models sell themselves they are so useful and the Reddit/HN crowd is just full of larping tech bros commenting conspiracy theories non stop.

As someone not using the technology, I'm fine with that :) Intellectual property laundering was never a good thing. Glad we can begone with it.

Everyone? There's worlds outside of the United States government overreach.

Unfortunately though, they're not smart enough to realize the long term damage to the industry that they're doing without any hint of remorse will negatively affect them and will have the opposite effect: Highlighting how imperative it is we all switch to open-source and remove our reliance entirely from them.

So not only are they going to take the whole industry down out of their own greed and stupidity and ruin it for everyone in the short term, but they're going to put themselves and the other labs out of business in the long term. Well done Anthropic. Well done Dario. You played yourself. 5d chess.

Is this Dario leveraging it into a ban on open models?

Step 1: "OMG, the AI hacked a researcher eating a sandwhich in the park!"

Step 2: Journalists use that great clickbait to generate profit, which generates publicity for Anthropic

Step 3: Rinse repeat

If the threat of LLMs was treated relative to the actual capabilities of them, and we weren't all being lied to by Anthropic and their army of millions of social media bots and backing media companies and mouthpieces, we'd be going in a much healthier direction. Working out the kinks/supply chain risks and developing sound, long-term countermeasures to the ACTUAL risks.

The only threat to the world is if progress is not open-sourced, democratized and in lockstep with capability. The moment it becomes a scenario of: Only a small group get access to frontier intelligence, is when it gives that small group power over everyone else in the world, and wildly increases the risk of a nuclear level event that WILL be exploited eventually - as the divide between the haves and the have nots accelerates in an exponential fashion. Bad AI is countered with an abundance of good AI that has been used to stay ahead of bad AI. The moment your bad AI outpowers the army of good AI it is game over for humanity. The strength of open-source and open-access AI is the difference between humanities permanent enslavement or extinction versus a prosperous future.

It doesn't help that most of the employees at Anthropic have willingly sold their souls out of short term greed and gaslight themselves into thinking that they're actually doing the right thing to justify their own greed to themselves, while building up an echo-chamber and culture of feel good lies within the company so they can sleep at night, and pat each other on the back. They go along with this because they get paid massive chunks of money from Anthropic, and their shares will be worth more money if Anthropic can swallow the worlds economy at the expense and enslavement of everyone else. What good is that money when you have to sell out humanity in the progress though. You, at Anthropic, is that the legacy you want to leave?

People need to start calling this out before it's far too late. If you work at Anthropic - time to start talking to your colleagues in an honest manner.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5742548/anthropic-penta...

OpenAI's models are very good, they have refusals + a government ID verification story for cyber access (I don't think they prevent non-US nationals, but I don't know this). What they don't have is Project Glasswing and all the hand wringing about how they're going to end the world in public.

I hope Anthropic pulls their head out of their ass and just starts acting like a normal company.

It's way more _proactive_ than the old models, sometimes in ways it shouldn't really be proactive. But it produces _more_ slop than 4.8, and I have not seen any real breakthroughs from it.

Edit: to give an example, I'm working on integrating a self-hosting auth provider into our app. So I gave it a prompt to create a "bootstrap" script that would create pre-configured settings for the local installation.

Fable did it. And then proceeded (unprompted) to test it by killing the running server, removing the database, re-initializing and (trying) to verify that the bootstrap produced identical results.

Well, yeah. Great. I can see how this "bias for action" works for security research and one-shot projects, not so sure about regular development.

I just tried that with Opus, and it produced a similar bootstrap script but did not start the test by itself.

I think David Sacks is right, if you are saying you are building nuclear bombs, then prepared to be regulated like one.

There is no eating it while having it

There is /so/ much stuff on the internet that just needed someone to spend enough time on it.

No, it's not what they wanted. As it says in your quote, they wanted "a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles."

Now we are getting reactive, arbitrary and capricious enforcement; rules rushed out the door; classified evals. The worst of both worlds.

They got what they claim they wanted for PR purposes. Like when a billionaire says they should be taxed more, or when Sam Altman says the public should get some of that AI wealth.

But they never thought it would actually happen.

Oops.

I wouldn’t the surprised if all this were actually orchestrated, it all seems too convenient.

Unfortunately there also a possibility this what they intentionally wanted to try regulatory capture to get rid of competitors.

Have people forgot about evidence?

The broader discussion about AI and model capabilities died a couple of years ago precisely because it's so underwhelming now. People did adapt. Startups stopped hiring just to get to MVP. Coding sweatshops had huge layoffs and stopped overhiring. The corporate world got better tools for collaborations and meetings. Accessibility tools are still bad, but improving. I would argue that the a11y topic is still very ripe to be the next big thing as it continues to converge with better UI/UX instead of being an afterthought.

The layperson and tech professional alike otherwise agreed that this is a vehicle for blame game, grift, disinformation, etc. This is where all the pushback is and the topic at hand. People aren't dumb. The only people worried about "AI" are the ones who bet too big on it.

Businesses will gladly pay it.

Individuals will be locked out and unable to compete.

Oracle will be able to "prompt a new smartphone" for $500M or whatever and enter the market to compete with Apple and Google. You and I can't afford that and won't be able to compete.

Hyperscalers will hyper scale even faster.

They'll port Linux to Rust, remove the GPL, and have all kinds of new entirely proprietary OSes. They'll be attested, signed, and gradually we'll lose open hardware. Thin clients with binary blobs, highly encrypted, no control, only leased to us.

Within a generation nobody will be able to program or own devices that can program.

That's the scary scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic%E2%80%93United_State...

The base intelligence does not feel much greater to me.

Fable was designed for _really_ hard software engineering problems. Possibly large, but especially hard. For those tasks, you feel the difference immediately.

Just because the Chinese are running export controls in one market doesn't mean that they're going to close of access to AI. They might, but each market should be considered in isolation.

Or they were getting silently rerouted and couldn't realise they weren't using Fable

GPT-5.5 isn't awful.

> We need to ensure America has leading open models founded on American values. Open- source and open-weight models could become global standards in some areas of business and in academic research worldwide. For that reason, they also have geostrategic value. While the decision of whether and how to release an open or closed model is fundamentally up to the developer, the Federal government should create a supportive environment for open models.

It's definitely not as good. But it's also definitely good enough.

A related thought though, the AI boom is predicated on the idea that everyone's going to want or need all this "mass produced" intelligence. But what happens to that when you go from being able to claim to have a total market size of ~8B people, to ~400M peoole? I think the reason to push ahead at any cost evaporates.

If every time a jailbreak is discovered, the model has to be turned off and jailbreak prevention updated, the effect will be the same regarding how willing users are to adopt it.

US vocabulary is confusing.

Well, in theory, it is easier to prosecute U.S. nationals if they "do bad things"

Although in practice I assume it's basically impossible to prevent a secondary market from developing which sells illegal access

I'm running a 248B model on a paltry amount of hardware and getting plenty of good use out of it.

Sure, the most demanding tasks will demand the best models (and always will). There's still less demanding tasks for other models.

I think some people are fooling themselves that coding of all tasks is always going to requires the biggest models ever. Again, maybe some coding tasks will, but the majority of business CRUD apps probably don't. Same goes for virtually any other type of task. The biggest models are really only useful for the most complex tasks.

Now this might not be the most cost effective (and may require a bit extra power), but you only need a datacenter for training or cost optimization.

So now the question is whether the capabilities of other models are worth their far cheaper token prices.

Plus, are we at all confident Opus or GPT 5.5 aren't about to get shut off?

BPS Space channel on YouTube made a collaboration with Mark Rober on a self landing rocket with a small engine, and all the experts they contacted would just stop responding the moment they asked something about the final phase of the flight. They later learnt that export controls bans those individuals from even discussing such topics with them.

I'd also think that they would transparently degrade, just to prevent production outages for clients that are requesting Fable explicitly.

Opus 4.8 spams a lot more text. It'd be obvious.

We’re gonna apply it to so many things it’ll have lost its meaning soon.

We can cancel all those data center plans, won't need them anymore.

Remember, technology is just a tool, just like cap sheets

Bad AI is only countered by having a majority of good, open-access and open-source AI to keep it in check, where the good AI can overpower the bad. The moment you destroy that balance is the moment a bad actor gains exponential advantage and the ability to hold the whole world hostage forever.

And? Computers are dual-use. Cars are dual-use. Telephones are dual-use. Freeze-dried chicken is dual-use.

Single-use, i.e. military only technology is actually pretty rare.

> This kind of posture is simply not tenable as frontier intelligence increases.

I reject the corpo speak that tries to brand these things as being "intelligent." They can be useful. But a language model cannot conjure a weapons platform from the ether no matter how "intelligent" it is.

AI is different though because these models are private, so they cannot really be considered to be "speech". Although if it were an open model it would likely be protected speech to release it.

The people who are the smartest people full stop aren’t the leaders of these companies - they’re the people you never meet, who are working in the research department, begging not to be promoted into management.