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The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't. That's probably 90% of the story. Once the government stepped in, their 5th g

by runako 2mo ago

The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't. That's probably 90% of the story. Once the government stepped in, their 5th generation was effectively killed. They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), or leave people with the perception they were overpaying for a weaker model (Opus 5). Hopefully Anthropic has learned to anticipate this risk and has a plan for rollout of their next model that plans for capricious ad-hoc regulation.

somenameforme 2mo ago
What did they think was going to happen when they were actively doomsday fearmongering around the release of their own model? I assume somehow they thought this would lead to a moat with them being left safely inside the castle, but this response, and Reagan's 9 Words, were always infinitely more likely. It was a demonstration of a child-like level understanding of how regulatory capture works.
- runako 2mo ago
  The PR from the US frontier labs has been poor to terrible from the beginning. Among other things, "we have stolen the collected works of your culture, now help us grow so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs" has to be one of the absolute worst marketing approaches in history.
  - rustcleaner 2mo ago
    >so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs Crimemaxxing about to go off the charts!
ComplexSystems 2mo ago
The government seems like it's in a rough spot. If they let Mythos out, they seem worried people could use it to mass-hack the internet. China seems to not care so much about this and they're right behind. I don't really know what the answer is.
- dannyw 2mo ago
  I wonder how much of it is fears over "mass-hacking the internet", and how much of it is fears over the model discovering various NSA/CIA/etc "tailored access operations", and other deliberate side-channels / vulnerabilities / etc? (Or perhaps vulns that NSA/etc discovered and has been keeping it private; as they're known to do). I feel there's a lot that's unaccounted for, and the whole "AWS team reports a 'jailbreak' that is just 'review this codebase'" story doesn't add up. I wonder if there were some parallel construction going on, and if at the same time, the NSA started losing the exploits they had because it was getting patched.
  - Revanche1367 2mo ago
    I think the latter is likely their primary concern. Certain models making hackers more effective doesn’t change that black hat hacking will still be illegal and that’s always been the prime deterrent against capable hackers. While there is some fallout likely with much more effective hacking being easily accessible, I’m sure govt analysts (unless they were let go) have their own prediction models telling them it’s inevitable that this technology eventually makes it to everyone they don’t want having it, what with China seemingly releasing every progress they make openly. Which makes me think that they’re preparing for that inevitability by hardening the govt systems currently in place and/or by burying the secrets they want to keep hidden deeper underground. Given the history of the US and this particular administration, I feel burying things deeper is a greater priority.
  - rustcleaner 2mo ago
    One thing is for sure, the USA certainly aren't the good guys anymore (if they ever really were). -t. American
- runako 2mo ago
  Whether or not the government chooses to regulate the space, capricious after-the-fact regulation is the worst of all possible worlds. The ~equivalent models from OpenAI did not get the same treatment (favoritism?), and it's not clear the government has produced even rough guidelines about how to be compliant going forward. Model prep costs far too much money to operate under this kind of regulatory regime.
rustcleaner 2mo ago
>They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), or leave people with the perception they were overpaying for a weaker model (Opus 5). Option C: they could "get hacked and the models exfiltrated" plausibly. Then the horses will be out and there would be no more point for the USGov's barn door.
nl 1mo ago
> The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't.... They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), But this isn't what happened? It was only a couple of months ago! How can we be getting this completely backwards already! Fable was aready what they were selling to the general public, and that is what the US government stopped them selling (not Mythos!) Anthropic tuned the already existing classifier to handle the use case the government highlighted and then they went back to selling it. They actually loosened the restrictions on ML-programming using it too. I use Fable as much as I can and I've never had a cyber refusal for it.
- runako 1mo ago
  You're agreeing with me. Mythos was locked down to a few customers. Fable went wide. USG told them to stop selling Fable. They tweaked Fable to appease the USG, but it clearly refuses/downshifts more requests than e.g. Opus 5. (I have run into Fable refusals even doing really normal stuff like fixing bugs reported by static security scanners like Brakeman. Not downshifts, outright refusals.) So the net result is they put "Fable" back on the market, but it was perceived to be a worse overall experience, at much higher cost. (Remember all this happened before most users had really even had a chance to put Fable through its paces.) That's where we are today: Mythos is locked, Fable is neutered. They probably can't fix this until they are ready to release something that's not called Fable, or that they can say has some key architectural differences to Fable. The sword of capricious regulation is always going to be hanging over Fable.
  - nl 1mo ago
    > The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't. > You're agreeing with me. No I'm not. They are selling it. I used Fable very extensively before the ban (100% usage in every window available) and continue to use it now. I haven't noticed any change in the refusals before vs after. > it was perceived to be a worse overall experience, Sure, people will believe whatever they want to believe. Doesn't make it right though.

by runako 2mo ago

somenameforme 2mo ago

What did they think was going to happen when they were actively doomsday fearmongering around the release of their own model? I assume somehow they thought this would lead to a moat with them being left safely inside the castle, but this response, and Reagan's 9 Words, were always infinitely more likely. It was a demonstration of a child-like level understanding of how regulatory capture works.

runako 2mo ago
The PR from the US frontier labs has been poor to terrible from the beginning. Among other things, "we have stolen the collected works of your culture, now help us grow so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs" has to be one of the absolute worst marketing approaches in history.
- rustcleaner 2mo ago
  >so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs Crimemaxxing about to go off the charts!

ComplexSystems 2mo ago

The government seems like it's in a rough spot. If they let Mythos out, they seem worried people could use it to mass-hack the internet. China seems to not care so much about this and they're right behind. I don't really know what the answer is.

dannyw 2mo ago
I wonder how much of it is fears over "mass-hacking the internet", and how much of it is fears over the model discovering various NSA/CIA/etc "tailored access operations", and other deliberate side-channels / vulnerabilities / etc? (Or perhaps vulns that NSA/etc discovered and has been keeping it private; as they're known to do). I feel there's a lot that's unaccounted for, and the whole "AWS team reports a 'jailbreak' that is just 'review this codebase'" story doesn't add up. I wonder if there were some parallel construction going on, and if at the same time, the NSA started losing the exploits they had because it was getting patched.
- Revanche1367 2mo ago
  I think the latter is likely their primary concern. Certain models making hackers more effective doesn’t change that black hat hacking will still be illegal and that’s always been the prime deterrent against capable hackers. While there is some fallout likely with much more effective hacking being easily accessible, I’m sure govt analysts (unless they were let go) have their own prediction models telling them it’s inevitable that this technology eventually makes it to everyone they don’t want having it, what with China seemingly releasing every progress they make openly. Which makes me think that they’re preparing for that inevitability by hardening the govt systems currently in place and/or by burying the secrets they want to keep hidden deeper underground. Given the history of the US and this particular administration, I feel burying things deeper is a greater priority.
- rustcleaner 2mo ago
  One thing is for sure, the USA certainly aren't the good guys anymore (if they ever really were). -t. American
runako 2mo ago
Whether or not the government chooses to regulate the space, capricious after-the-fact regulation is the worst of all possible worlds. The ~equivalent models from OpenAI did not get the same treatment (favoritism?), and it's not clear the government has produced even rough guidelines about how to be compliant going forward. Model prep costs far too much money to operate under this kind of regulatory regime.

rustcleaner 2mo ago

>They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), or leave people with the perception they were overpaying for a weaker model (Opus 5). Option C: they could "get hacked and the models exfiltrated" plausibly. Then the horses will be out and there would be no more point for the USGov's barn door.

nl 1mo ago

> The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't.... They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), But this isn't what happened? It was only a couple of months ago! How can we be getting this completely backwards already! Fable was aready what they were selling to the general public, and that is what the US government stopped them selling (not Mythos!) Anthropic tuned the already existing classifier to handle the use case the government highlighted and then they went back to selling it. They actually loosened the restrictions on ML-programming using it too. I use Fable as much as I can and I've never had a cyber refusal for it.

runako 1mo ago
You're agreeing with me. Mythos was locked down to a few customers. Fable went wide. USG told them to stop selling Fable. They tweaked Fable to appease the USG, but it clearly refuses/downshifts more requests than e.g. Opus 5. (I have run into Fable refusals even doing really normal stuff like fixing bugs reported by static security scanners like Brakeman. Not downshifts, outright refusals.) So the net result is they put "Fable" back on the market, but it was perceived to be a worse overall experience, at much higher cost. (Remember all this happened before most users had really even had a chance to put Fable through its paces.) That's where we are today: Mythos is locked, Fable is neutered. They probably can't fix this until they are ready to release something that's not called Fable, or that they can say has some key architectural differences to Fable. The sword of capricious regulation is always going to be hanging over Fable.
- nl 1mo ago
  > The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't. > You're agreeing with me. No I'm not. They are selling it. I used Fable very extensively before the ban (100% usage in every window available) and continue to use it now. I haven't noticed any change in the refusals before vs after. > it was perceived to be a worse overall experience, Sure, people will believe whatever they want to believe. Doesn't make it right though.