President Donald Trump has been bullish on artificial intelligence and insists that the United States will hold “global AI dominance.” This has resulted in a marked antipathy by the administration to any regulation of AI systems. The Department of Justice has gone after states, such as Utah, that have dared to attempt some regulation in the face of federal inaction, and the first federal feint at regulation, announced only a few weeks ago, is a bald pretense.
But the curtain has been raised on Act Two of this saga. And, as Shakespeare would appreciate, this transition is fueled by human passions: to wit, high-ranking officials in the Trump administration despise the AI company Anthropic and would like to punish it for its temerity in not allowing the government to do what it likes with its systems, such as Claude.
Just last week, the Trump administration did something quite out of character, but quite consistent with its emotional logic. It decided that another of Anthropic’s systems, Fable, was too easy to jailbreak, and its capabilities could pose a threat to national security. Rather than order Anthropic to de-deploy Fable, it took a more subtle route: The administration slapped export controls on Fable, including forbidding the company from allowing access to Fable by any foreign citizen, including Anthropic employees.
Originally published by Deseret News. Read the full article here.