Anthropic’s Pentagon Talks Hit Surveillance and Weapons Snag

Anthropic PBC’s talks about extending a contract with the Pentagon are being held up over additional protections the artificial intelligence company wants to put on its Claude tool, a person familiar with the matter said.

Anthropic wants to put guardrails in place to stop Claude from being used for mass surveillance of Americans or to develop weapons that can be deployed without a human involved, the person said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The Pentagon wants to be able to use Claude as long as its deployment doesn’t break the law. Axios reported on the disagreement earlier. Bloomberg Mandeep Singh reports.  Anthropic PBC’s talks about extending a contract with the Pentagon are being held up over additional protections the artificial intelligence company wants to put on its Claude tool, a person familiar with the matter said.

Anthropic wants to put guardrails in place to stop Claude from being used for mass surveillance of Americans or to develop weapons that can be deployed without a human involved, the person said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The Pentagon wants to be able to use Claude as long as its deployment doesn’t break the law. Axios reported on the disagreement earlier.

AI’s use cases for developing weapons and gathering personal data are a burgeoning risk for powerful models. Anthropic, which positions itself as a more responsible AI company that aims to avoid catastrophic harms from the technology, built Claude Gov specifically for the US national security apparatus and aims to serve government customers within its own ethical bounds.

WATCH: Anthropic is in a disagreement with the Pentagon over additional protections the AI firm wants to put on its Claude tool. Neil Campling explains.

Claude Gov has enhanced capabilities for handling and interpreting classified materials and intelligence and for understanding cybersecurity data.

“Anthropic is committed to using frontier AI in support of US national security,” a spokesperson said, adding that the company is having “productive conversations, in good faith” with the Defense Department “on how to continue that work and get these complex issues right.”

Read More: AI-Made Bioweapons Are Washington’s Latest Security Obsession

“The Department of War’s relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in an emailed statement. “Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people.”

Many defense officials view Anthropic as a supply-chain risk and the Defense Department may require vendors to certify that they don’t use the company’s models, according to a senior defense official.

The dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the boundaries of AI use may benefit other companies.

The official said that makers of other models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini, and xAI’s Grok, have been working with the Pentagon to make sure their platforms can be use lawfully.

Anthropic won a two-year agreement with the Pentagon last year that involved a prototype of Claude Gov models and Claude for Enterprise. The Anthropic negotiations may set the tone for talks with OpenAI, Google and xAI, which aren’t yet used for classified work, Axios said, citing people familiar with the discussions whom it didn’t identify.

A spokesman for OpenAI declined to comment and referred to a blog post outlining the company’s custom GenAI.mil tool for the Pentagon and other democratic countries. A representative for Google didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for X didn’t have an immediate comment.

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