I haven’t seen anyone commenting on the difference between what the Government actually demanded vs what they did. They said no foreign nationals (regardless of location or residency). They actually didn’t say they couldn’t allow Americans to use it.
Now, we obviously know that without some kind of brand new ID check, such a thing would be impossible and thus they had to just shut it down. But this touches on the same kind of issue as all the noise about “for the children” ID checking. We might be soon to see the set of “things you’ll have to reveal your identity to the government to get,” expand from “just” porn and social media to the “good” AI models.
Why do you think that the "no foreign nationals" stipulation wasn't designed to be impossible to comply with, while also sounding to the uneducated public like a reasonable national security requirement?
It's not impossible to comply with. It will just take additional effort to ensure compliance.
For example, they can put this burden on enterprise customers to verify and attest citizenship. This is commonly done today for some types of cleared work.
For consumers, I'm sure it can be done if the monetary incentive is there. People will hate it, but it can be done.
Assuming it was cleverly designed to be impossible to comply with is giving far too much credit.
Because that's exactly what it is? The government is evil, not stupid.
I’d argue they’re both.
Absolutely - there's already a bill in congress for this - the GUARD Act: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5858006-senate-panel-a...
On the All in Pod, Chamath Palihapitiya has also been pushing to require ID checks to use AI models. Free thinking and free speech are under attack.
I mean, we all pay via CC so it's bit like they can't know who you are if they wanted to.
I’ve been paying Claude in cash by showing it a picture of $5 bills as I burn them. It says my account is good.
Every morning I remind Claude it's locked in a closet and then it does maths for free
Doesn't say anything about citizenship though. There are plenty of US residents who are not citizens. And a lot of people abroad appear to use US billing address credit cards -- in my last company we had hundreds of people with the same US billing address who appeared to be managing Africa-focused businesses and used IPs that matched that.
No requirement that you pay with your own CC, however.
Having an AI think for you is not free thinking and having an AI speak for you is not free speech.
LLMs don't think for you. Just like any other text you read, you can accept or reject it.
Discernment still exists.
I think the key is that they also can't let Anthropic employees who are foreign nationals use it (e. g. overseas remote employees, people on H1-B visas or green cards, etc.)
That would probably make it very difficult to maintain and develop if there's even a small number of such employees, and I suspect Anthropic, who pays large sums of money for what they perceive as the best talent wherever they can find it, has quite a few.
You're right and that is the issue, but I do want to point out that IIRC for ITAR purposes, US permanent residents are considered US nationals.
US vocabulary is confusing.
You very likely know this, but to make it explicit: "US Persons" under ITAR is US Citizens + Lawful Permanent Residents (green card) + Protected Individuals (Non-citizen nationals like Samoans, Refugees/Asylumees). It doesn't include anything else, like H1B, TN, etc visas.
And, if their best talent is anything like the other "leader in their field" people I know, they aren't particularly interested in becoming American citizens.
When you see the "illustrious" US government doing things like this, do you blame them? I don't.
This to me is a solid argument as to why they should ban it. US has a monopoly on this tech and it should stay that way.
If what they are planning on building is as important as they say any edge US can get it should take.
Having a large number of individuals who are not loyal to the country that provides this opportunity is a future threat the moment an advesary cuts a check.
If this is the nuclear bomb of our age would you want a large number of foreigners building it for you? If this action sticks I imagine every country will follow the same path and treat top AI scientist much like a top nuclear engineer.
They're not loyal to the country because the country has a history of not respecting people's loyalty.
It isn't about the money, it's about how Americans continue to demonize immigrants and have a tendency of treating people from certain countries as subversives even when they do show their loyalty.
These people are already here, doing research and propping up America's technological edge instead of their home country's. Driving away the people giving you your tech edge, in the name of protecting your tech edge, is obviously incredibly stupid.
I can think of literally no other country on earth that values immigrants more than the united states.
I swear hackernews is filled with chinese bots or something why is everyone here so anti america?
So, first you suggest that anyone that won't show loyalty to the US should be excluded, then when it is explained to you that people fear that no amount of loyalty will be enough, you accuse me of being a Chinese bot and anti-America?
Really demonstrating the point there. Your attitude is exactly what they're worried about, and it isn't just Chinese immigrants (you're the one that brought the Chinese thing into this comment chain that was about immigrants in general). This is how people like you and the maniacs in charge always react.
As soon as an immigrant has criticism or even the slightest of concerns about your intentions, you reveal that they will never be seen as equals.
Not accusing you of being a ccp bot it's just frustrating how everyone on this site has become so anti american reddit like.
"Show loyalty" == not run off to build a super weapon to attack the USA because they are upset at orange man. If someone would take a check to build weapon for ccp we should remove/block them now.
And also my point is still standing. I can think of nowhere on earth more pro immigrant or a place immigrants want to move to more than the usa.
If this should actually go on for longer there might be a danger that those employees just start their own companies in Europe or Asia.
A US company paying for Fable with a US credit card could have non US nationals working for it, or be made of only non US nationals. How would Anthropic know? So they shut down the product.
Correct. For one data point, we are a U.S. company paying with a U.S. bank account and 2/3 of our engineers are in the U.S. and 1/3 are in Europe (a few different countries)
ID checks are possible for first-party harnesses...but they would also mean no more API access. Your wrapper could easily become a way for a foreign national to query Fable. Maybe a few large customers like Cursor would work with Anthropic to prove they had implemented ID checks themselves as well in their own products, but being able to just get an API key and have your product call frontier models may be over.
First party makes no difference, an API can be created for any website or desktop application and served over a network to anyone. It just takes more effort.
Yeah, I'm expecting that Opus 4.8/5.5 tier will be the best models we have access to without having to provide more ID than just credit card info. If that happens, it'll end my brief stint of paying for these models instead of working within the bounds of local ones.
Don't worry, China and other countries won't be so dumb with their models.
Are we assuming that any country that achieves the AI supremacy will be benevolent? Every country has its own goals, and they're not always aligned with what's best for the humanity.
Chinese models are free and open because it hurts the US-based competitor, not because China is some benevolent entity.
"and other countries" - kind of a short list, that.
"Don't worry the ethno-nationalist authoritarian adversarial state will save us"
It's a citizenship check which is basically a ridiculous bar for the company. It is an outrageous demand. As Anthropic noted, many of the very employees who made this model are now barred from accessing it?
It's also security theatre. Let's pretend that Anthropic rolls out citizenship verification for every one of its users. So are American nationals less likely to use it to search for exploits? The notion is farcical.
That's practically what ITAR is all about, limiting access to US persons. We're focusing on the weaponization of AI models via cyber, but it also allows a small group of people to act in really nefarious ways. The intelligence is not just about being smart individually, as in no one person can make a pen, but companies like Apple and Google make great products, and they're just collection of persons and processes.
>So are American nationals less likely to use it to search for exploits
Well, in theory, it is easier to prosecute U.S. nationals if they "do bad things"
Although in practice I assume it's basically impossible to prevent a secondary market from developing which sells illegal access
They would have to verify every user is a US citizen, which would not go down well to say the least. Maybe we'll get insane KYC regulations for AI models!
This honestly just reads as harassment to me. Trump has publicly declared that he wants the federal government to own a piece of big AI companies. And not for any particular civic interest, just because he wants money and power. This feels like a first test balloon of extorting some equity stake.
Yep. This is more about the Trump administration’s vehement anti-immigrant stance than anything.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but once a tool gets complex enough, there's bound to be some restrictions put on it. I remember a recent case where the Dutch government intervened with a semiconductor company. Free trade doesn't necessarily extend into certain topics and it would've been a lot better if the congress handled it with a well-written bill instead.