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US allows Anthropic to release Mythos to 'trusted partners' (reuters.com)
135 points by bobrenjc93 1 hour ago
21 comments

Next time someone tells you this is the party of free market and small government, I guess you just laugh now?
I've been laughing when people tell me that for my entire adult life. It remains a pretty funny bit of dark humor, though.
its all trump, he is a megalomaniac, not affiliated with any party but his own
But it's not just him, it's the entire party aggressively supporting him and everything he does.
And yet the rest of the party falls in behind him.
This seems like it will have pretty huge negative affects on startups needing to compete with 'trusted partners'
Startups don't have as much money to spend on lobbying and gifts, though.
Well... there are crypto startups, and perhaps a generous definition of "money"
Will startups be even a thing now that the VCs obviously just need to funnel all their money to 2 or so companies ad-infinitum for guaranteed returns.
The single most important question to be discussed on this website right now.
Other than maybe some in-the-moment cybersec wrappers, is this really true? Does anyone think a startup with a good product is going to be materially disadvantaged by not having access to an incrementally better security focused LLM release? It’s lots of fun to pretend it’s some step-change that’s too dangerous for general release, but in real life it’s not conferring some massive advantage that any real startup would need to compete. Almost everyone would be best just to ignore it and keep building.

(Just to be clear, I think the gatekeeping is ridiculous, especially given the above)

Imposing a licensing system on models for limiting domestic use should require an act of congress but I mean obviously we're well past that red line.
Regulatory agencies limit uses of other products without acts of congress-- cigarettes, vapes, drugs, pesticides, chemicals, explosives. Even firearms, despite a constitutional amendment! Why not models? (Note I am not arguing it's a good idea; I'm making a narrow argument that there is precedent.)

EDIT: I agree that it should require an act of Congress to explicitly delegate this power.

> Regulatory agencies limit uses of other products without acts of congress-- cigarettes, vapes, drugs, pesticides, chemicals, explosives.

Every one of those is by a regulatory agency that was explicitly empowered by Congress to do such regulation.

until it isn't, i.e. certain rulings over the last couple years...
The ATF was created by an act of congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968
All of the agencies responsible for those regulations were created by and get their funding from Congress. Currently, they're asleep at the wheel. Or a better idiom might be "cowering in the corner".
I would say, "sitting smugly astride the monster's back, confident that they will never be fed to it".
Fairly certain all those have "acts of congress" attached to them. I mean, it used to take a constitutional amendment to make something illegal but now we have tons of agencies responsible for regulating all the things.

Plus, they're relying on the "math is a weapon" law to ban "export" of the models.

I don't like it one bit, but Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC 2778) in the Ford administration and it has been applied to software since at least the Clinton administration.
isn't this materially different in that it creates a kind of class system within the US?
It has never taken a constitutional amendment to make something illegal.
Prohibition was the 18th amendment
slavery required the 13th amendment
"Malboro cigarettes may once again be sold, but Newport remains banned for everyone except large purchasers that have paid the appropriate bri... fees."
None of those things are knowledge. I think theres something specific around limiting access to knowledge and capabilities that makes this feel insidious.
Information is covered by ITAR, so that's not new. You can illegally export information about an ITAR covered item by just allowing a foreign national the potential to see an item. They don't even have to prove the foreign national actually did see it.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...

I wonder what kind of emergency will happen when real elections get around
Overturning the Chevron doctrine is good because it stops lawful people from doing things we don't like. We aren't bound by laws, so we can do whatever we want.

-- GOP probably

Do you remember the export controls on Covid vaccine material during the height of coronavirus? I do
They did. Defense Production Act (50 U.S.C. § 4511 );Export Control Reform Act, 50 U.S.C. § 4812 are just two of them.
I understand why Anthropic might not want to fight this particular one in court, because they're trying to convince the administration to let them move forward.

But would another company who is not on the trusted partner list and has less to lose taking on the admin have standing to sue here? On the basis of the export control being illegal and this putting their business at a disadvantage vs. competitors with access

This appears to be only for Mythos 5 access, NOT Fable 5.
So only 100 companies have exclusive access to frontier AI.
Aren't these the same models?
Under the hood, yes, but Mythos had more relaxed safeguards and was/is only available to a subset of approved customers under Project Glasswing, similar to the situation with GPT-5.6 now.
Fable was available to me as a normal person using Claude.ai

Mythos never was and I don’t think that’s changing.

Mythos doesn't have the strict safeguards of Fable and is only accessible by a very small number of pre-approved companies.
Congrats sama. Such a great sophisticated 5d chess move.
It feels the U.S. is moving closer to a textbook definition of crony capitalism. Really sad but unsurprising with the current administration.
And we get the news the same time OpenAI releases 5.6. What a coincidence?
I think they kind of had to since they allowed OpenAI to do a 5.6 "preview to trusted parties" today. The other driver is that the DoD/NSA wanted to get access to Mythos again. I figure OAI will now do several weeks of 'preview' like Anthropic did with Mythos. When OAI wants to release 5.6 wider to actually start making money with it, I expect Fable will get approved the same day.

Back when the administration hit Mythos/Fable with the surprise ban, I figured this would be the endgame. They'd keep Anthropic tied up until a competitor had a roughly comparable model ready, then gate them the same.

"I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model"

I assume "trusted partners" means, "companies that have bribed Trump an appropriate amount". A few million for the inauguration, a few million for the ballroom, a few million on a movie about Melania, the don wants a taste.

This is what “stacking the deck” looks like
I thought Fable was a "safer" Mythos?!
I suppose the point is that Mythos was released to a smaller set of partners anyway and Fable is for the masses.
Is there a list of the partners that get access? That should be public, right?
Wowee, just happens to be on the same day of OpenAI's Sol announcement. How convenient for Dario and Anthropic!
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Feels like someone is playing a high-stakes game, putting on a show involving the US government.
This should perhaps not be surprising considering the president.
Why would they allow Mythos but not Fable? Fable is the one with more guardrails.
They only allow it for specific companies and agencies, which are trusted with the less restricted model. The general public is still not trusted to use Fable, apparently.
To quote famed businessman and philosopher Eugene Krabs: "Money."
Land of the free, land of the brave. Free market. Freedom of speech. Market economy.

These words don’t mean what they use to anymore. Newspeak is in full swing. Words still sound the same and are written in the same way but now mean something completely different. If Mao and Stalin were alive, they would be nodding approvingly.

Free for me, not for thee!

I hope the Chinese models catch up soon so I can stop contributing to the American economy.

* to some US companies.

Asterisk the size of a Mac truck.

Also this administration having say over who gets access to what AI is just so much more grift corruption and picking your favorites / destroying others, for these incdecent undemocratic in American grifters who've seized our state.

If this is the way things are now, isn't that going to crash the AI stocks? All those trillions dumped into it probably weren't with the expectation that it could only be sold to a handful of select US agencies and corporations.
> If this is the way things are now, isn't that going to crash the AI stocks?

Maybe, maybe not. Tech stocks are mostly vibes-based now, reality isn't really a concern for them.

They are all private aren't they? There's nothing to crash since the valuations were all made up funny raise numbers anyway. A donation to the right person likely removes the restrictions
should see 5.6 any day now
@dang can you change it?
TL;DR - OpenAI and Anthropic are both allowed to ship their most powerful models to a small number of companies pre-approved by Trump.
Who needs freedom of speech anyway? I'm just glad the trump admin is looking out for by best interests. /s
Sarcasm Detected, -40 Ameripoints have been deducted from your account. Have a nice day!
Why post a content free link to Twitter for this?