Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

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• Hacker News
• "The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any *foreign national*, whether inside or outside the United States, including *foreign national* Anthropic employees."

  This press release is odd - it says that the export control was imposed to stop foreign nationals from using Fable / Mythos, and then goes on to talk about supposed concerns about jailbreaking the model.

  But is that really the concern of the US Administration? This looks more to me like they are viewing frontier models as a strategic asset which they want to keep for US-exclusive use. I can see the logic - if frontier models generally accelerate a society's technological development, then a country looking to retain or increase its strategic edge over other countries would try and keep this sort of multiplier for themselves.

  I'm guessing Anthropic shut of access for everyone because currently they have no reliable way to know whether a user is or is not a US citizen. In the near future we might be in a situation where you need to prove your US citizenship before Anthropic / Open AI will allow you to use their current frontier model.

  by spangry
• I haven’t seen anyone commenting on the difference between what the Government actually demanded vs what they did. They said no foreign nationals (regardless of location or residency). They actually didn’t say they couldn’t allow Americans to use it.

  Now, we obviously know that without some kind of brand new ID check, such a thing would be impossible and thus they had to just shut it down. But this touches on the same kind of issue as all the noise about “for the children” ID checking. We might be soon to see the set of “things you’ll have to reveal your identity to the government to get,” expand from “just” porn and social media to the “good” AI models.

  by xp84
• Well, there go any such claims of dangerousness in future models, regardless of if they are true or false.

  No one's going to risk building anything important on these models if the government will randomly order the use of the model to be discontinued by all foreigners, regardless of if they are in the US or not. Just a matter of a foreign company catching up to take the commercial market for such models (though, as the US often does, they'll ban the competitor, so actually we'll have a situation where the backend uses a different model in only the US).

  by hgoel
• So many comments here missing the big picture, and just gleefully pointing out that Anthropic got what they deserved, or that this is the natural culmination of some kind of marketing stunt.

  The real story here is that this may be the beginning of governments restricting the availability of strong LLMs to the public, to you. Fable was the strongest model on the market, and the US government has told you you can't use it (technically, only if you're not a US citizen, but in practice, even if you are). If you think the solution here is going to be open source Chinese models and / or running on your own hardware, think again. Do you think China is going to allow the strongest LLMs from companies within its borders to be open source a year from now when they have Mythos capabilities, if the US government is keeping the strongest American models back? Unlikely. These are heading in the direction of being powerful cybersecurity weapons and it will be in the interest of nation states to restrict and control them. In 2 years time, I would be surprised if the strongest LLMs are available for general use at all.

  Will we be the poorer for that, or will we be safer? I think poorer, because I hate being told what technology I can and can't use, but I'm not certain. Maybe you think the government should restrict strong LLMs. Maybe you don't. But either way, this is big news and a rubicon has been crossed and a precedent set. That's true even if the motivation for this is just the government settling scores with Anthropic.

  by libraryofbabel
• Listen - that's the sound of millions of companies and users doubling down on Chinese models.

  It might be a national security problem for other nations to have access to these models. But it's equally now a national security problem for any other nation to depend on them. Or US tech in general.

  by zmmmmm
• So isn’t the only logical conclusion that we have reached the max of model capabilities that the US allows to be made available to the public? Why invest in smarter models with this precedent?

  And potentially more importantly: if a model like Mythos, which at best is an incremental improvement over Opus, is getting this treatment, how are all the AI investments that are based on the expectation of ASI / AGI / significantly better models going to be recouped?

  by stingraycharles
• I think we should see this as simply silly behavior by a government.

  Export control is not an effective tool for controlling a consumer facing technology developers everywhere want to use (see:VPNs) so there was no good faith policy justification for imposing an export control.

  This is an administration that seems to be keeping track of who its friends are and aren't, and likes to be the center of every story. They also seem to like extracting concessions and reciprocal favors. We saw some of this behavior in the last administration too. US voters deserve better.

  by holmesworcester
• When you spend a lot of time telling people how dangerous your products are, people who have the power to keep dangerous products off the market might listen.

  Especially if those people aren't presently very bright, and are already mad at you for not helping them achieve their unrelated authoritarian goals.

  I do not think this is somehow a 3D chess move by Anthropic. They are not masterminds, even if they'd really like to be. People who actually interact with their products know that Fable and Mythos are incremental improvements, not doomsday devices. I think this is a punitive move by an administration that loves being punitive, which they have unknowingly bolstered with their own dumb rhetoric.

  by ivraatiems