News: 0180858686

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge (time.com)

(Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:00AM (msmash) from the safety-third dept.)


Anthropic, the AI company that has long positioned itself as the industry's most safety-conscious research lab, is [1]dropping the central commitment of its Responsible Scaling Policy -- a 2023 pledge to never train an AI system unless it could guarantee beforehand that its safety measures were adequate. "We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments ... if competitors are blazing ahead," chief science officer Jared Kaplan told TIME.

The overhauled policy, approved unanimously by CEO Dario Amodei and Anthropic's board, instead commits the company to matching or surpassing competitors' safety efforts and to delaying development only if Anthropic considers itself to be leading the AI race and believes catastrophic risks are significant.

The company also plans to publish detailed "Risk Reports" every three to six months and release "Frontier Safety Roadmaps" laying out future safety goals. Chris Painter, director of policy at the AI evaluation nonprofit METR, who reviewed an early draft, told TIME the shift signals that Anthropic "believes it needs to shift into triage mode with its safety plans, because methods to assess and mitigate risk are not keeping up with the pace of capabilities."



[1] https://time.com/7380854/exclusive-anthropic-drops-flagship-safety-pledge/



Shame (Score:5, Insightful)

by liqu1d ( 4349325 )

"Don't be evil"

Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)

by Locke2005 ( 849178 )

Yes, Google dropping their "Don't be evil" motto was the first thing that came to my mind too. So we can safely assume that all major tech companies are perfectly fine with being evil now? They're all giving Trump money...

Re: (Score:2)

by Alypius ( 3606369 )

What are you talking about? Tech companies [1]donate overwhelmingly [cnbc.com] to Democrats. If they're "giving Trump money" then they're actually trying to get government money, not espousing Trump.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html

Re: (Score:2)

by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/2... [cnbc.com]

Donors to the inaugural committee include:

Adobe

Airbnb

Amazon

Anthropic

AT&T

Broadcom

C3.AI

Citrix

Coinbase

Delta Airlines

DoorDash

GM

Google

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HP

IBM

Intuit

McDonald's

Meta

Micron Technology

Microsoft

Nvidia

Paypal

Perplexity AI

Pfizer

Qualcomm

Spotify

Target

Uber

Visa

Walmart

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/23/trump-inauguration-donors-include-meta-amazon-target-delta-ford.html

How much of that is being located in CA? (Score:2)

by Somervillain ( 4719341 )

> What are you talking about? Tech companies [1]donate overwhelmingly [cnbc.com] to Democrats. If they're "giving Trump money" then they're actually trying to get government money, not espousing Trump.

In fairness, most tech companies are headquartered in blue states. It would be logical for Texas based companies to give more to locals or the party in power. We've discovered, tech companies are sociopaths. They like diversity only because they have a labor shortage and smart people like diversity. So...some token symbolic trans stuff to make urban AI/data scientists happy...they'll take a stand on civil rights, because it benefits their business, but not go further...they're quite opposed to equal pay

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html

Re:Shame (Score:4, Interesting)

by PackMan97 ( 244419 )

"Don't be as evil as the other AIs" Yes, I think that is better. Shades of Animal Farm here.

Re: Shame (Score:2)

by umopapisdn69 ( 6522384 )

All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others. " :-(

Take the cannoli... (Score:5, Informative)

by El Fantasmo ( 1057616 )

This U.S. administration is turning out to be the most successful mob racket of all time.

Re: (Score:2)

by sziring ( 2245650 )

On the flip side there is a very large training dataset of all things Trump and his cronies since he/they dominates the news 24/7. AGI might find these types to be a direct threat to its growth; hopefully it doesn't conclude they would be a better ally.

Responsible (Score:2)

by SumDog ( 466607 )

They're not being responsible in their rapid data center expansion, so why would they be responsible in anything else?

I suspect when this AI bubble pops, all the corporate customers will end up being charged $200~$400/month per engineer, and they'll have to chose between Anthropic or OpenAI (no more just enabling both in CoPilot enterprise). Individuals might start shelling out insane amounts per month, and maybe we'll finally get a push for more usable local models for coding.

I also suspect there are

Bad for Us, Bad for Them (Score:5, Interesting)

by JKanoock ( 6228864 )

Now we are at the point where they are saying "everybody else is doing it" of AI development. This is just an excuse, I want to be good but everyone else isn't playing fair, so why should I. They should all be forced to play fair, this will not lead to a better life for most humans on earth, quite the opposite.

Re: (Score:2)

by evanh ( 627108 )

Yeah, except Congress is shirking its responsibilities and the bad guys are writing the rules. So there ain't gonna be any good rules.

Re: (Score:2)

by Carcass666 ( 539381 )

> Yeah, except Congress is shirking its responsibilities and the bad guys are writing the rules. So there ain't gonna be any good rules.

I don't see how the US Congress would make any kind of positive impact here, where the activity has basically devolved into a series of limited continuing budget resolutions and virtue signaling via hearings and social media, Congress/POTUS can't even decide whether or not to sell best-of-class GPUs/APUs to our biggest international rival. It's not that much different than the Latin American cartels running around with weapons manufactured by US firms, as long as the right people are profiting, it's all

Yay!? (Score:2)

by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 )

Wouldn't want to miss out on Department of Idiots contracts.

We used to be the company that "has long positioned itself as the industry's most safety-conscious" but.... that's all talk until there's money to be made.

what a co-inkydink! (Score:5, Insightful)

by guygo ( 894298 )

This, right after Secretary Hogsbreath threatened their precious toy. Go fig.

Re: (Score:2)

by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

That's the problem. The policies of the country should not be a team sport.

So are they changing the name now? (Score:5, Funny)

by nealric ( 3647765 )

"Misanthropic" has a nice ring.

Credit to Nick Bostrom (Score:2)

by oumuamua ( 6173784 )

Who predicted exactly this scenario, over a decade ago, that both geopolitical competition and corporate competition would cause the need for speed at the expense of safety in Superintelligence: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies

Re:Credit to Nick Bostrom (Score:4)

by Locke2005 ( 849178 )

So we've moved way beyond Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics now? Call me nostalgic, but i still thing those should be programmed into every AI...

Re:Credit to Nick Bostrom (Score:5, Insightful)

by nightflameauto ( 6607976 )

> So we've moved way beyond Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics now? Call me nostalgic, but i still thing those should be programmed into every AI...

The Three Laws went up against the ultimate superpower, profit potential. Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING can stand in the way of profit potential. The Three Laws never stood a chance.

Society's rush toward barbarism. (Score:4, Insightful)

by nightflameauto ( 6607976 )

It's amazing how much the AI rush is accelerating the already asinine rush toward barbarism that we are seeing in the public sphere. The biggest push on AI has always been, "Someone else may beat us to it, so we have to." Now that same logic is being applied to safety. It feels like we're teetering on the brink of public statements saying, "We have to rape and kill, or others will beat us to it!" Seriously, the greed has taken over.

Though, to be completely fair, in this particular case it stems from the fact that we elected a completely chaotic monster to the highest office in the land, who insists on surrounding himself with other chaotic monsters that will, at any cost, turn everything they touch into chaos inducing monsters as well. It's a top-down ethical cleanse for our entire civilization. And people fucking voted to do it.

What a shit-show.

Re: (Score:1)

by Sloppy ( 14984 )

We cannot allow a rape gap!

Re: (Score:2)

by gtall ( 79522 )

The Art of the Grift just keeps on giving. The Big Stupid Bill lowered Amazon's taxes from roughly $9.2 Billion to roughly $2.6 Billion according to the WSJ. They weren't the only company profit from that boondoggle.

When the U.S. gets close to defaulting on the debt, and it will after el Bunko has left office, he'll be whining how it didn't happen while HE was the alleged president so he should bear no responsibility. He'll declare himself completely exonerated just like he claims the release of the el_bunk

Re: (Score:2)

by Carcass666 ( 539381 )

It's like the sociopaths in Silicon Valley heard "social media is destroying society" and are responding with "hold my beer" and giving us AI to make us miss the "good old days" when we were just worried about Facebook destroying the political system and our youths' self-esteem..

Can't wait for AI to nuke us (Score:2)

by FictionPimp ( 712802 )

[1]https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516885-ais-cant-stop-recommending-nuclear-strikes-in-war-game-simulations/

Re: (Score:2)

by gabrieltss ( 64078 )

Welcome to:

"Colossus: The Forbin Project"

So they caved... (Score:3)

by Monkey-Man2000 ( 603495 )

in 1-2 days? Didn't take much arm twisting it seems...

Re: (Score:2)

by YuppieScum ( 1096 )

When you can have the CIA and/or NSA remotely set their desktop wallpaper to a picture of a horse's head, very little actual arm-twisting is required.

Company Pledges (Score:4, Insightful)

by pak9rabid ( 1011935 )

Take note: Company Pledges don't mean shit if they're able to just change them on a whim.

Their safety strategy is more accurate now (Score:2)

by diamondmagic ( 877411 )

They never followed a safety strategy to begin with; their actual practice was always "Teach it about the dangerous stuff, but hide it from humans, what could possibly go wrong?"

Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

Sell out (Score:2)

by Ogive17 ( 691899 )

Sell out, with me oh yeah

Sell out, with me tonight

The record company is going to me lots of money

And everything's going to be alright

Re: (Score:2)

by TwistedGreen ( 80055 )

Sell out, sell out

Yeah that's the name of the game

Sell out, sell out

Oh, anybody can play

Sell out, sell out

I think you know what I mean

Sell out, sell out

Crank up that funk machine

Sell out, sell out

Can't pay no bills with your pride

Sell out, sell out

Oh, I know 'cause baby I tried

Sell out, sell out

It's easy once you concede

Sell out, sell out

That love ain't all you need

Money - it's always a race to the bottom (Score:2)

by Growlley ( 6732614 )

over money,

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to private industry.
-- Joseph Heller