“Please pay attention to this story,” MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle urged viewers on Wednesday’s “The 11th Hour,” before highlighting a major move from Anthropic, a company Ruhle described as a “behemoth” of the artificial intelligence industry.
On Tuesday, Anthropic, the maker of the AI chatbot Claude, officially announced that it would abandon its hallmark safety pledge. The company had previously imposed internal guardrails on its technology and promised to delay AI development that might be dangerous.
A spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that the change is intended to help the company compete with its AI industry rivals.
As Ruhle explained, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei had left his previous role at OpenAI over concerns that the company was prioritizing speed over safety, “and now this is where we are.”
“The 11th Hour” host then added some context to Tuesday’s announcement, which she noted “comes amid an escalating fight between [Amodei] and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over how the Pentagon could use Anthropic AI technology.”
Anthropic, which holds a $200 million government contract, previously told Hegseth it would not allow the Pentagon to use its model for mass surveillance of Americans or to help with the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.
According to multiple reports, Hegseth, who met with Amodei on Tuesday, gave Anthropic until Friday to back down from those safeguards and to allow the U.S. military unrestrained application of its technology, or face punishment from the administration, including being blacklisted from future government contracts.
“This is extraordinary,” the MS NOW host said of the development, arguing that the U.S. government essentially told Anthropic simply to “trust” that it would use the company’s technology responsibly, or else the government would “put you out of business.”
“In the wrong hands,” Ruhle warned, “this is dangerous, dangerous technology.”
You can watch Ruhle’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”