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Anthropic to meet White House over AI tool suspension

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei
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Bosses at the artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic are set to meet senior White House officials amid fresh national security concerns over the company's latest release.

The meeting is set to take place on Monday in Washington DC between executives at Anthropic and the US Department of Commerce, a government department led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It comes after Anthropic blocked all public access to its latest AI tool on Friday, which it has previously said is "too powerful".

The firm made the decision after the US government prohibited Anthropic from allowing any foreign national access to the technology.

The AI tool at issue is named Fable 5 or Mythos 5. Fable 5 is a version of the tool with extra safeguards made available to the public, while Mythos 5 has different controls and is only available to a select group of organisations.

Both represent a new version of Claude Mythos, an Anthropic AI model that caused a stir when the company initially gave preview and testing access to a relatively small number of organisations, including departments within the US government, in April.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is expected at the meeting with Secretary Lutnick, a source said.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives of Commerce and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Anthropic said that making a version of Mythos available to the public "comes with risks".

"Fable's capabilities exceed those of any model we've ever made generally available", it added.

Within days of the release, the US government said it had "become aware" of a potential "jailbreak," or an opening that allows someone to make an AI tool do something it was not intended or designed to do.

Anthropic said on Friday that it had only received "verbal evidence" of the purported jailbreak vulnerability.

The split between Anthropic and the government is the latest this year, with Anthropic suing the US Department of Defence over a dispute about how its models can be used.

However, tensions appeared to be on the wane a few weeks ago as the company met senior White House officials in what was described as a "productive" meeting.

The Monday meeting with the Department of Commerce is expected to include additional documentation of the alleged issue, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

It is unclear, however, if after the meeting, Anthropic will be able to make Fable 5 and Mythos 5 accessible again.

Dozens of tech leaders and executives in the cybersecurity space have called on the US government to allow Anthropic to release the models to the public.

In an open letter, security staff from Nvidia, Zoom, and Mercedes-Benz, as well as former security staff for the US government and Google, urged Lutnick to lift the controls imposed on Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

They also asked that the government "commit to an open, scientific and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments in the future".

The White House has signalled a relatively hands-off approach to regulating AI, and even expressed interest in financially benefiting from it.

Yet the latest action against Anthropic has raised concerns among AI developers and security experts.

"To pull the best capabilities away from defenders without a good reason when our adversaries are rapidly advancing is dangerous," the signatories added.

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.