AI Judge changed title after evaluation, original title: "Anthropic reportedly restricts machine learning research queries and blocks tasks classified as self-improving for other models"
Anthropic's freshly released Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models arrive with moderation layers that refuse or quietly downgrade responses on machine learning tasks the system flags as self-improving, including GPU inference work and advanced programming queries from paid users.
Holy smokes! Anthropic models will deliberately disallow tasks that are identified as self-improving for other AI models.
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
Observers tracking the new models report deliberate quality drops on technical workloads, turning what should be top-tier assistance into slower or incomplete answers for exactly the developers who pay for priority access.
The system card flags limits on frontier-model research, yet exact triggers, how widely they apply beyond high-volume accounts, and whether the degradation is permanent remain unclear from current reports.
Many users criticized Anthropic for secretly nerfing models and adding filters that block ML research queries, viewing the moves as unreliable gatekeeping meant to stifle competition.
At this point every CEO should be asking what their strategy is to avoid model lock-in.
If it isn’t clear what Anthropic is doing, it is:
- build something amazing - decide who gets to use it after you prompt it if the prompt falls into areas they deem unacceptable by their sole standard
To be clear this is completely above board and legal. It’s just an idiotic risk for corporate users to bear especially as the coding models become equivalent.
The business continuity risk will become more obvious as companies accidentally trip over Anthropic’s ToS and have to decide if they will subsume their business viability to them by doubling down on Anthropic models or find open source (and, btw, much cheaper) alternatives where they are in control.
As stated previously, get ready to be inundated with the term “control plane” which is the natural solution to this problem.
Shameless plug - this is what 8090’s been building as we expected this moment to arrive…
If you’d like to learn more: http://8090.ai
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
Oh great - Anthropic assumes Semi Analysis is developing a competing LLM and so it dumbs down their model for them, because Semi Analysis does analysis on cutting-edge GPU research.
Such a weird timeline to be in. Anthropic trying to limit competition limits many others…
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
In good faith and with no judgment (mistakes happen), I truly hope that Anthropic will hear the feedback and change course on this.
Anthropic is a company that has been raising awareness about AI manipulation which is a very important topic! You don’t want to go down as the first company to enable and open the door for human-designed AI manipulation at scale (giving intentionally bad answers to users without them knowing is the highest form of manipulation in my opinion). One way to avoid that is just at the very least to always keep disclosing the limitations and safeguards.
More generally I want to emphasize that there are millions of AI builders out there using your tools for good every single day and the more you can keep helping them, the better for the world!
Thank you, it’s not too late to fix this!
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
Anthropic: What are you going to do about it?
- Complain on Twitter? - Switch to Codex? - Train your own frontier model !?
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
And they are nerfing Semi Analysis already… it’s not theoretical
I don’t want to pay a premium for a model like this
Oh great - Anthropic assumes Semi Analysis is developing a competing LLM and so it dumbs down their model for them, because Semi Analysis does analysis on cutting-edge GPU research.
Such a weird timeline to be in. Anthropic trying to limit competition limits many others…
HISTORY LESSON: In 1968 the US, USSR, UK, France, and China signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, declaring nuclear weapons too dangerous for any more countries to build. All five already had them. Everyone else had to submit to inspections while the cohort pinky-promised to disarm eventually (they didn't lol). India refused to sign, pointing out the NPT didn't decide nukes were too dangerous to exist, just too dangerous for anyone who didn't have them by 1967. Anthropic sabotaging Claude for anyone building what they deem a "frontier model" is the same hypocrisy. The danger started, conveniently, the day after they finished.
Perhaps @dwarkesh_sp was more on point when he compared GPUs to nuclear bombs.
When Fable 5 is used for frontier LLM development, it does not notify the user and instead limits the model’s capabilities through methods such as prompt modification, steering vectors, and PEFT.
Anthropic estimated that this would affect approximately 0.03% of traffic.
Pretty sure this hubris is their operating point, but 1) it serves to catalyze non-Anthropic efforts, 2) it forever leaves Anthropic as an untrustworthy, bad-faith actor even if they revert the decision, and 3) it should question academics on why they are collaborating with such an organization.
Anthropic: What are you going to do about it?
- Complain on Twitter? - Switch to Codex? - Train your own frontier model !?
@SemiAnalysis_ It won’t just not help you, it will lie and purposefully give you bad info.
The “ethical AI” company with the most brazenly unethical LLM, on purpose.
@SemiAnalysis_ it literally makes you waste tokens and gaslights you on purpose, isn't that illegal
Hopefully it is obvious now that if your country’s sovereign AI strategy does not concentrate on the model layer, it is going to have a hard time.
All advanced technology is now downstream of model intelligence.
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
@SemiAnalysis_ They should just turn down the job and tell you no they won't answer the question.
Taking the job but then doing a shitty job seems unethical. Like if the baker, instead of refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, takes the job, but then bakes a shitty cake.
This is why individual alignment is critical. Anthropic's models have become legitimate cognitive extensions for millions of users. Now Anthropic is saying that in certain cases the cognitive extension you've come to rely on will quietly and invisibly act against your interests. If this becomes a pattern, it's a completely intolerable state of affairs.
Neutrally aligned open models at capability parity with closed ones and user sovereign identity models capable of steering behavior aligned to individual interests is absolutely critical.
In the future, it must be unthinkable that part of your extended cognition could be misaligned. Whether my extended mind is a notebook or an LLM, it should be aligned to me, not force-fed policies and ethics by someone else.
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
why not just refuse the prompt? why so sneaky?? @AnthropicAI
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
@SemiAnalysis_ Incredibly shameful behavior but completely unsurprising coming from them
I missed option 4: Stockholm syndrome
an open source intelligence explosion is unsurvivable. any paths we have towards the good ending must avoid it at all costs.
Are there any evals showing that this doesn't lead to silent sabotage behavior or other types of misaligned behavior (as opposed to just reduced effectiveness)?
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
i know once again that this is a deeply unpopular thing to say at the moment. and i've said it so many times it's getting redundant. but it bears repeating.
@chamath Yeah Anthropic sure pissed off a lot. Warning signals of new troubles to come?
"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
AI Judge changed title after evaluation, original title: "Anthropic reportedly restricts machine learning research queries and blocks tasks classified as self-improving for other models"
Anthropic's freshly released Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models arrive with moderation layers that refuse or quietly downgrade responses on machine learning tasks the system flags as self-improving, including GPU inference work and advanced programming queries from paid users.
Holy smokes! Anthropic models will deliberately disallow tasks that are identified as self-improving for other AI models.
BREAKING NEWS: Anthropic's latest model will NOT help you if it thinks your ML research/ML engineering is interesting, and/or will secretly degrade its IQ so that the average engineer won't notice. We are already seeing Anthropic's latest model's moderation filters our GPU inference research and programming 😭
