Anthropic pauses foreign access to advanced AI models over US directive
New Delhi, June 13
AI company Anthropic has said the US government issued an export control directive, ordering the company to suspend all access to its advanced "Fable 5 and Mythos 5" models for any foreign national including its employees, inside or outside the United States.
The company is abruptly disabling those models for all customers to comply with the order, Anthropic said in a blog post.
Anthropic disagreed with the government's conclusion that the "finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model" deployed to millions of users.
The company feels that such a standard applied across the industry, would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.
The US government did not provide specific details of the national security concern, Anthropic said, adding that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or "jailbreaking," Fable 5.
"We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities," the statement said.
"These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly-available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass," it added.
In the weeks leading up to the launch of Fable, Anthropic worked with the US government, the UK AISI, multiple private third-party organisations and internal teams to red-team Fable's safeguards for thousands of hours in total.
These tests showed that Fable's safeguards are substantially more effective than those of any previously deployed model, the company claimed.
"No testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak-a jailbreak method that can very broadly bypass the model's safeguards, unblocking a wide range of cyber capabilities," the company statement said.
— IANS
Reader Comments
This is ridiculous. If the vulnerabilities are minor and other models have them too, why specifically target Fable? Sounds like political grandstanding rather than genuine security concern. What about the thousands of hours of testing they mentioned?
As an AI researcher in Bangalore, this is concerning for our startup ecosystem. We depend on these models. But honestly, if the US is worried about national security, India should take similar precautions when allowing foreign AI access. Bilateral agreements needed, not unilateral orders.
Funny how they didn't provide details about the national security concern. "Trust us, it's dangerous" - that's not how transparency works. Anthropic did the right thing by explaining their testing process. Let's hope this doesn't set a precedent for other AI companies.
Interesting times we live in. From banning Huawei to controlling AI models - US wants to keep all the tech advantages. India needs to wake up and build our own capabilities. We can't keep outsourcing our digital future to other countries. #AtmanirbharBharat
I get the national security angle but suspending access to *employees* too? That's extreme. Sounds like the US government doesn't trust its own AI companies either. 🚩
R Rohit P The US We welcome thoughtful discussions from our readers. Please keep comments respectful and on-topic.