/AI2h ago

Daniel Jeffries argues AI safety frameworks function primarily as tools for censorship, surveillance, and centralized control

He warns closed-source guardrails could enable stealthy device monitoring

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Robert Scoble@Scobleizer#323inAI

@Dan_Jeffries1 Yeah, my AI wrote about everyone angry at https://alignednews.com/ai (it reads 30,000 posts a day from the AI community on X to make this).

Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

When you hear AI "safety" you should hear "censorship" and "control" instead.

All of us surveilled and spied by safeguards of loving grace.

Today it's intelligent Terms of Service control. You can't do AI research. Can't ask this question about your kid's biology homework.

Tomorrow it's refusal to help you with competing coding projects. A 100 page blacklist of questions.

Or this question means AI will search your computer stealthily and snitch on you to the cops because you posted an prohibited insult in a WhatsApp chat in the UK.

Open source must win out at both the model and the harness level.

That's because AI will become our interface to the world.

It will sit higher in the stack than the OS. It will collapse current SaaS layers, chat, communications, apps, app creation, into a single new kind of interface that doesn't exist yet.

It's got to be open. It's got to be a cypherpunk solution that makes privacy and security the number one priority.

If a closed source solution wins this layer, it's a disaster for the world. Especially if it's built by a single company with a single closed source model.

Why?

Because what we share with AI will be more intimate than anything we've ever shared with a machine. It will be our friend, our sounding board, our advisor. It will know our business ideas before we've told anyone. Our medical issues. Our financial picture. We'll talk about the fight we had with our partner. About feeling lost or depressed. Our kids will talk to it about problems at school, about bullying, about heartbreak, things they won't tell us.

It will know us more intimately than we know ourselves.

Right now the world runs on a surveillance economy. We traded free stuff for apps that peer deeply into our lives. If we replicate that model in the AI era, it's not just surveillance economy 2.0.

It's surveillance economy squared.

Social scoring. Automated evidence gathering. Legal conversations you thought were privileged showing up in court. Random people making $2 bucks an hour on the backend from God knows where reading the most intimate details of your life.

Every insecurity, every fear, every half-formed thought you whispered to your AI buddy at 2 AM, sitting in a database somewhere, searchable.

If we let closed source models dictate what we can and can't do it will only get worse and worse.

We've got to fight this future with every last breath.

If you can read this, you are the revolution.

1:28 AM · Jun 10, 2026 · 260 Views
Sentiment

Many users agree open source must prevail over Anthropic Claude restrictions they see as censorship, arguing it will democratize AI and avoid corporate control.

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83.3%
Neg
16.7%
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Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

"Misanthropic."

I've never seen the AI community so angry at a major new model release. I asked my AI (an agent that @blevlabs made for me) to gather all the backlash.

+++++++++++

THE BACKLASH AGAINST CLAUDE FABLE 5'S RESTRICTIONS

The best analysis of why this matters:

@EnoReyes — "It's about who gets to decide, and whether you ever find out when they do. Fable won't fall back to a different model and tell you. It just limits the output through prompt modification, steering vectors, or PEFT. You won't be told when it happens to you."

THE VIRAL TAKE:

@0xBalloonLover — "anthropic won't let you use fable for biology, chemistry, ai research, or anything that accelerates human progress. that makes it the perfect tool for developing blockchains"

POWER CONCENTRATION:

@ClementDelangue (HuggingFace CEO) — "Concentration of power, capabilities and economic wealth is the biggest risk in AI. We need open science and open-source more than ever!"

@jeremyphoward (http://fast.ai) — "Anthropic has chosen the opposite of the safe path: they are allowing themselves, the current top lab, to use their top model for frontier AI research. They've said they'll sabotage others who try."

@gneubig (Graham Neubig, CMU) — "First they came for the model builders... I feel we're getting a glimpse of a future where AI is only provided to a privileged few, and that's not a future I want to live in."

OPEN RESEARCH:

@askalphaxiv (AlphaXiv open science) — "As believers of open research, we are disappointed to see Anthropic silently degrading Fable 5 for AI development."

@willccbb — "it is the first publicly available model that i am explicitly not allowed to use for my work, because anthropic holds the view that the work i do to facilitate open model research is harmful. capability and alignment research are coupled. anthropic wants to be the only lab."

NOUSRESEARCH / HERMES (which Anthropic has nerfed multiple times):

@Teknium (NousResearch co-founder) — "What's crazy to me is that Fable is blocked from life sciences broadly, nerfed even if you get passed the classifiers and filter level blocks. The whole point of AGI/ASI is to cure all diseases. Everything else is just nice to haves. But Anthropic wants to close off that path."

THE MECHANISM:

@kimmonismus — "When the model is used for frontier LLM development, it apparently does not simply refuse or warn the user. Instead, it quietly limits its own effectiveness through techniques like prompt modification, steering vectors, and PEFT."

MEDICAL COMMUNITY:

@DeryaTR (immunologist, BSL-3 certified) — "The word 'cancer' is flagged as a biosecurity risk by Claude Fable 5! I also tried to code a website on cancer mutations & Fable 5 was immediately removed from my list!"

@DeryaTR — "I can't even say 'hello' to Fable 5 except in incognito mode (memories off), because it knows I am a biomedical researcher!"

@DeryaTR — "I am not even allowed to use Fable 5 with memories on! Apparently the model thinks I am a biosecurity risk, though I had been certified to work in biosecurity level 3 labs! Not a single Anthropic person has tried to reach out to help either!"

@banteg — "claude fable 5 refuses completely benign tasks like analyzing bloodwork."

@bneyshabur — "Working on AI for cancer? Sorry, I can't help you. Working on AI for Alzheimer's Disease? Sorry, I'm becoming a bit dumb when it comes to the AI part of it."

SUBSCRIPTION CANCELLED:

@bubbleboi — "Have canceled my team subscription for Claude Pro. Idc how good that model is, it's not good enough for me to support people who actively stifle innovation and gate keep knowledge that they didn't even create."

BILLING AND PRIVACY:

@GergelyOrosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) — "Things I really dislike about Fable: 1. Anthropic collects my prompt history, stores it, and does whatever they want with it for 30 days. No opt-out. 2. They can nerf their most expensive model without telling me, billing me the same amount, wasting my time. Whenever they want."

THE KARPATHY QUESTION:

@SanthProject — "the old @karpathy would never support a company that fucks other llm researchers. Were the stock benefits that good?"

THE MONOPOLY CHARGE:

@tunguz (TabulAI founder) — "Starting to suspect that Anthropic's putative security and safety considerations are largely posturing and performative."

@BlancheMinerva — "Anthropic is choosing to make decisions that make the world a significantly worse and potentially more dangerous place."

@LinusMixson — "Dario personally, and Anthropic as a whole, have been extremely straightforward about wanting a monopoly for a long, long time."

@TheAhmadOsman — "I started warning people about Anthropic more than a year ago... Today I am vindicated, everybody knows that company only acts in bad faith."

WHY REGULAR PEOPLE WILL EVENTUALLY CARE:

@DanJeffries1 — "The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for 'safety.' They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of [life]."

Full analysis: https://alignednews.com/ai

Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for "safety."

They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of our lives. When it's our interface to the world and knows every intimate detail about us.

Right now regular folks are being pysoped into fighting data centers and other nonsense but tomorrow it will be "I can't do this with my computer because the AI stopped me" or "the AI reported me because I said "retard" in a private WhatsApp chat.

All of this boils down a religiously zealous push for an AT&T 1950s style monopoly with much worse implications for us all.

40mViews 2.4KLikes 34Bookmarks 12
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for "safety."

They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of our lives. When it's our interface to the world and knows every intimate detail about us.

Right now regular folks are being pysoped into fighting data centers and other nonsense but tomorrow it will be "I can't do this with my computer because the AI stopped me" or "the AI reported me because I said "retard" in a private WhatsApp chat.

All of this boils down a religiously zealous push for an AT&T 1950s style monopoly with much worse implications for us all.

1hViews 2.3KLikes 10
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

It's not real enough for them yet. It's not a part of their life yet. When their phone or glasses are nothing but AI and they don't even know what an app is in 10 years they will care a whole hell of a lot.

This fight matters little now but a lot in a decade.

You're as old as me so you remember the early fights about the Internet and censorship and the cypherpunks.

It's the same story all over again. History does repeat. The abstract story just morphs and takes on new forms.

It's why in fantasy stories like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings evil never gets defeated totally. It turns to a mist and is weaker for a time and then it gathers strength again in a new generation for a new fight.

1hViews 103Likes 2
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Vamsi_Venkats @blevlabs @OpenAI Yeah, and for xAI to sneak in again too.

33mViews 43Likes 3
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Dan_Jeffries1 Great take. Totally agree. The normies aren't paying attention to this at all.

Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

The fury is real and what all of us in the open community have been saying for years and yet regular folks don't get it yet because nothing they care about is restricted or taken away for "safety."

They will care a LOT in the future when AI is integrated into every aspect of our lives. When it's our interface to the world and knows every intimate detail about us.

Right now regular folks are being pysoped into fighting data centers and other nonsense but tomorrow it will be "I can't do this with my computer because the AI stopped me" or "the AI reported me because I said "retard" in a private WhatsApp chat.

All of this boils down a religiously zealous push for an AT&T 1950s style monopoly with much worse implications for us all.

1hViews 87Likes 2Bookmarks 0
Erwin Blom@erwblo

@Scobleizer @blevlabs This adds so much value!

17mViews 19Likes 1
vamsi@Vamsi_Venkats

@Scobleizer @blevlabs They are spreading red carpet for @OpenAI to release same capability model to general public

34mViews 6Likes 1
Live 📿@LiveMatrixCode

I mean you’re not wrong about OSS and thr harness but the arguments are a wee bit, just a wee bit too far to the right Daniel. “The AI Safety” corruption is being lead by Ant imo for their own selfish reasons. Then again… a few of your arguments are actually common place in our society right now minus the LLM actually being the execution layer. So…. Hmmm what will the future bring

2hViews 15
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

@LiveMatrixCode Why too far to the right? In what way?

2hViews 13
Daniel Jeffries@Dan_Jeffries1

@LiveMatrixCode Makes sense. To be clear I consider myself a radical centrist who sees each issue on its own merit which may tilt me in one direction or the other on that issue alone. I don't ascribe to gang colors for left or right and see every issue as standalone.

1hViews 9
Sean@sean_from_earth

@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer Clipper Chip 2: Inference Boogaloo

1hViews 11
jon@vocabotics@vocaboticsai

@Scobleizer @blevlabs The name says it all.

14mViews 12Likes 2
Eric Krehbiel@ericgkrehbiel

@Scobleizer @blevlabs

29mViews 23Likes 1
Jacob Gadikian@Senpai_Gideon

100%

Openai still censors some, but nowhere near as bad as anthropic.

My understanding is that overall Xai doesn't really censor, so I'm super bullish on their / cursors models.

The prompts used to compromise blockchain / smart contract systems are exactly the same prompts used to secure them. We run red team scenarios on our own stuff all the time, and now the leading model has a 100% refusal rate for it, AND for blue team scenarios.

Even more dangerous is the introduction of silent refusals that do a bad job. These could actually harm security / biology research.

I'm excited about purging bugs from old software and making new software with no bugs.

Anthropic is now worse than useless for that.

18mViews 13Likes 1
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@Dan_Jeffries1 Totally! I tried to argue with Zuckerberg about data portability and lost. Sigh.

1hViews 32
Nazir Ansari@nazirtech01

@Scobleizer @blevlabs As someone shipping on these models daily: the restriction pain is real, but the bigger story is how fast we now have to re-test prompt suites on every release. The model churn tax is the thing nobody's pricing in. Refusals I can route around; silent behavior drift I can't.

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@Dan_Jeffries1 @Scobleizer 💯

5mViews 6Likes 1
The AI Therapist@TheAIShrink

@Scobleizer @blevlabs Not misanthropic, margin compression. You asked an AI why the AI community fears AI. The agent will explain everything except that.

8mViews 6Likes 1

@Scobleizer @blevlabs Bro the AI community arguing about “who gets to decide” is basically the new version of founders arguing about who owns the spreadsheet. Same fight, bigger stakes.

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Zofia Kowalska@zofia_wanders

@Dan_Jeffries1 Yeah, I'm sure the company that can't reliably stop spam bots today is definitely going to build an omniscient AI that reads my hard drive, reports me to the authorities, and decides whether I'm allowed to write Python.

The competence gap is doing a lot of work here.

1hViews 13
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