Musk lashes out at Anthropic as Pentagon summons AI company CEO Dario Amodei
Mumbai, Feb 24
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly summoned AI firm Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for "a high‑stakes", "tense" meeting over the military's use of the company's Claude AI model, according to reports, as Elon Musk slammed the AI company over allegedly stealing training data.
The report from Axios said, citing an anonymous senior defence official, that the meeting was "not a friendly" one as Anthropic did not remove restrictions on their technology even as Hegseth urged AI firms to do so.
Claude is currently the only AI system deployed inside classified defence networks, under a $200 million pilot contract signed last year but Hegseth in a January 9 memo asked AI companies to renegotiate terms to remove restrictions on their technology.
However, Anthropic stayed put on refusal to fully lift safeguards, including restrictions on mass surveillance of Americans and development of fully autonomous weapons, the report said.
Defence officials warned Anthropic could be designated a "supply chain risk," voiding contracts and restricting other Pentagon partners from using Claude even as the AI firm's spokesperson called discussions "productive". Replacing Anthropic is deemed complex given its deep integration into defence systems, the report added.
Meanwhile, Pentagon has signed agreements with Elon Musk's xAI and is nearing a deal with Google for Gemini model building pressure on Anthropic, The New York Times reported.
Ahead of the meeting, Anthropic alleged three Chinese AI firms used chatbots to siphon millions of Claude outputs to train their own models.
Musk, in response, lashed out at Anthropic on X saying, "Anthropic is guilty of stealing training data at massive scale and has had to pay multi‑billion-dollar settlements for their theft."
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO called the AI company 'MisAnthropic.'
Claude is a next generation AI assistant built by Anthropic and trained to be safe, accurate, and secure. The new AI assistant could automate legal document reviews, compliance checks, sales planning, marketing campaign analysis, financial reconciliation, data visualisation, SQL‑based reporting and enterprise‑wide document search.
— IANS
Reader Comments
The hypocrisy is astounding. Musk's company is signing deals with the Pentagon while criticizing Anthropic. It just looks like business rivalry dressed up as ethical concern.
This is why India needs to develop its own sovereign AI capabilities, both for defence and civilian use. We can't be dependent on these foreign companies and their internal dramas. Jai Hind!
The Chinese firms siphoning data is the most concerning part for me. We need strong data protection laws in India to prevent our information from being used to train foreign AI, especially for military purposes.
Musk calling them 'MisAnthropic' is funny but also a cheap shot. The real issue is the Pentagon wanting to remove all restrictions. That's dangerous for everyone, not just Americans.
With all respect to Anthropic's ethical stance, if they truly stole training data at a massive scale as Musk claims, that undermines their moral high ground significantly. The pot calling the kettle black? 🤔
The integration complexity mentioned is key. It shows how deeply entangled these AI systems are becoming with national security. A sobering thought about technological dependency.
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