Artificial intelligence company Anthropic, known in part for its commitment to developing AI with guardrails, announced changes to a core safety pledge, CNN reported.
As the outlet noted, Anthropic was "founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI" — and the firm is locked in a separate high-profile conflict with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
On Tuesday, Hegseth lobbed an ultimatum at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: Discard prohibitions on surveilling American citizens and executing lethal strikes without human oversight, or be labeled a "supply chain risk" under the Defense Production Act, per Politico.
Hegseth gave Anthropic until Friday to comply or, as CNN noted, be placed on what was "effectively a government blacklist."
Anthropic's Claude is widely seen as the most capable chatbot, taking the top spot in CNET's rankings, and the firm's focus on AI safety and responsible development is part of the product's appeal.
Against a backdrop of federal pressure to eliminate guardrails, Anthropic published a blog post detailing changes to the third edition of its Responsible Scaling Policy.
Anthropic described it as a framework to "address AI risks that are not present at the time the policy is written but which could emerge rapidly as a result of an exponentially advancing technology."
While AI remains relatively novel, the general public has become acquainted with issues that emerge rapidly in the wake of AI advancements, and a shift in opinion from the beginning to end of 2025 illustrated that perfectly.
As AI growth exploded in every direction, data centers began appearing across the country in tandem. Not long after that, electric bills soared nationwide. A report found that 17% of American households were at risk of shutoffs due to past-due balances.
In addition to placing financial strain on cost-burdened consumers, rapid AI growth has similarly strained the public grid, leading to an unsettling warning from the Department of Energy about insufficient capacity and a hundredfold increase in blackouts.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 According to CNN, Anthropic's RSP shift was "separate and unrelated" to the Pentagon's ultimatum, but the firm's loosening of its protocols gave users pause.
A spokesperson for Anthropic told CNN in a statement that the company needed to innovate at the speed of its competitors.
"We've gone a significant step further from our prior policies by committing to publicly publish detailed reports at regular intervals on our plans to strengthen our risk mitigations, as well as the threat models and capabilities of all our models," it read in part.
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