3 ms·

*Anthropic apologizes they got caught defending their moat by implementing invisible Claude Fable guardrails

cyanydeez 4mo ago
is it a moat or just a way to implement the permanent underclass?
simonw 4mo ago
If by "got caught" you mean "published it in their system card paper". (Admittedly it was buried pretty deep in that 300+ page PDF, but they did at least disclose it. If they hadn't I imagine it would have taken quite some time for the research community to figure out what was going on.)
- afthonos 4mo ago
  It was in the announcement, too. I’m 99% sure they edited it after they changed their mind, because I knew about it from reading that, and never opened the model card.
  - skavi 4mo ago
    On the earliest web archive snapshot I can find [0], I do not see any mention of the safeguard/sabotage under discussion [1]. And to be clear, this isn't the safeguard where the model is explicitly downgraded to Opus, but rather where the Fable/Mythos model's "effectiveness" is transparently "limited" via "prompt modification, steering vectors, or parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT)". [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260609173222/https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5 https://web.archive.org/web/20260609173222/https://www.anthr... [1]: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/10/if-claude-fable-stops-helping-you/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/10/if-claude-fable-stops-...
    - afthonos 4mo ago
      Indeed. I can’t find it, but I swear I knew after reading the announcement, without opening the model card. It stood out because it was so weird. Maybe they changed it before the first snapshot, maybe something else happened, I don’t know.
- bellowsgulch 4mo ago
  Yes, I actually do mean that. I skimmed the system card. Them stating it openly, doing it, and being called out on it just doesn't have any meaningful difference. They could have simply told people "we do not permit using Claude models to perform frontier AI research," which is defensible from a policy point of view. This particular usage of their products requires no deception, nor hiding information prevent abuse. However, instead, they chose for some reason to publicly display a morally poor way to execute a reasonable business decision (preventing abuse, defending your business interests, etc.)
- ajyoon 4mo ago
  I wasn't buried, it was on the third page after the ToC
afthonos 4mo ago
They didn’t get caught, they explicitly said they would do that in the announcement. I think it was both bad and a weird idea, but it certainly wasn’t sneaky.

is it a moat or just a way to implement the permanent underclass?

If by "got caught" you mean "published it in their system card paper". (Admittedly it was buried pretty deep in that 300+ page PDF, but they did at least disclose it. If they hadn't I imagine it would have taken quite some time for the research community to figure out what was going on.)

afthonos 4mo ago
It was in the announcement, too. I’m 99% sure they edited it after they changed their mind, because I knew about it from reading that, and never opened the model card.
- skavi 4mo ago
  On the earliest web archive snapshot I can find [0], I do not see any mention of the safeguard/sabotage under discussion [1]. And to be clear, this isn't the safeguard where the model is explicitly downgraded to Opus, but rather where the Fable/Mythos model's "effectiveness" is transparently "limited" via "prompt modification, steering vectors, or parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT)". [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260609173222/https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5 https://web.archive.org/web/20260609173222/https://www.anthr... [1]: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/10/if-claude-fable-stops-helping-you/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jun/10/if-claude-fable-stops-...
  - afthonos 4mo ago
    Indeed. I can’t find it, but I swear I knew after reading the announcement, without opening the model card. It stood out because it was so weird. Maybe they changed it before the first snapshot, maybe something else happened, I don’t know.
bellowsgulch 4mo ago
Yes, I actually do mean that. I skimmed the system card. Them stating it openly, doing it, and being called out on it just doesn't have any meaningful difference. They could have simply told people "we do not permit using Claude models to perform frontier AI research," which is defensible from a policy point of view. This particular usage of their products requires no deception, nor hiding information prevent abuse. However, instead, they chose for some reason to publicly display a morally poor way to execute a reasonable business decision (preventing abuse, defending your business interests, etc.)
ajyoon 4mo ago
I wasn't buried, it was on the third page after the ToC

afthonos 4mo ago

They didn’t get caught, they explicitly said they would do that in the announcement. I think it was both bad and a weird idea, but it certainly wasn’t sneaky.