While the United States is in full war against Iran, the Ministry of Defense has found time to clean house with its technology providers by dismissing the Anthropic conversational agent named Claude. Donald Trump immediately banned its use across his administration. This ban comes after everything seemed to be going well for Anthropic, with a $200 million contract signed last summer with the American military.
At the time, Anthropic had opted for this language model, which was considered more reliable and secure than its competitors. It was authorized to process sensitive files to identify strategic targets. If Trump ended this collaboration, it would be due to two ethical limits that the Californian company had set for itself: no use of its tool for mass surveillance of the American population or the control of fully autonomous weapons.
The army wanted to surpass this threshold to grant itself full powers. It therefore issued an ultimatum to Claude to remove these barriers, which the ministry called “ideological whims.” But Claude stood his ground and was publicly executed by Donald Trump: “The United States will never let a radical left-wing woke company dictate to our great army how to fight and win wars!”
If Trump’s woke obsession is surfacing, it is to highlight his political grievances with Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, who supported Kamala Harris in the last elections. He recently described ICE’s actions in Minnesota as horrific, questioning the importance of protecting the rights of American citizens. “We must use AI for defense in every way except those that would bring us closer to our autocratic adversaries,” that is his doctrine.
Faced with this almost “domestic enemy,” Anthropic has been blacklisted as a risk to national interests. Today, Dario Amodei is turning to the courts to challenge this decision and save his interests. At the same time, Sam Altman did not wait long to seize the opportunity, and Open AI signed a contract with the army, while putting some ethical limits on the table to save face.
Yes, because before being fierce competitors, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei were associates within Open AI when the company had non-profit status. In 2021, Dario clashed with Altman over strategic vision differences, and with his sister and other Open AI engineers, they founded Anthropc and created Claude. The startup will gradually find a place in the shadow of the Big Bang Chat GPT, reaching a more professional audience. The company quickly benefited from funding from giants like Amazon and Google.
To distinguish itself, Anthropic adopts the role of a morally conscious company aware of the dangers of artificial intelligence while still acting like others, including plundering copyrighted content. Dario Amodei regularly raises the fear of a general AI capable of surpassing human intelligence one day, positioning himself as a safeguard against potential chaos. His forced withdrawal from the American army where he had nevertheless agreed to sign a lucrative contract could be an opportunity. He could appeal to anti-Trump figures in the tech industry and encourage European countries to extend a hand to him – after all, in French, Claude sounds good!
