GoKawiilOn today’s episode of Decoder, my guest is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter for The Verge. Often when Hayden comes on the show, it’s because something has gone wrong in the world of AI. Last weekend, that something was a pretty intense mix of Anthropic, the Trump administration, and Anthropic’s new AI model, Fable 5.
On Friday, not even a week since Anthropic released Fable to the public, the US government said it was imposing export controls on the new model, as well as the underlying Mythos model that Fable is based on. Those controls restricted foreign nationals, even those working for Anthropic in the United States, from accessing these models. Anthropic then took Fable and Mythos offline for everyone, because the company said it was worried it would not be able to restrict access and reasonably comply with the order otherwise.
As you might imagine, this is all a giant mess. Hayden actually just published a fantastic play-by-play on The Verge about how this all went down last Friday and the scramble through the weekend from both sides to figure out what exactly happened and how it might get resolved. So I wanted her to come on and just walk me through the timeline and what it all means.
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The situation is ongoing. As of Tuesday when we’re recording this episode, Fable is still offline — in fact, if you boot up Claude, it tells you right above the chatbox window that “Fable 5 is currently unavailable.” Yet as you’ll hear Hayden explain, whether Fable comes back online this week or not, the ripple effects of the government’s feud with Anthropic have far-reaching consequences for the tech industry and the US’s AI regulatory regime.
There’s also a big irony here, and you’ll hear Hayden and me get into that, too: Anthropic has spent years arguing that AI might soon be powerful enough to be dangerous — and that the government needed to get serious about regulating AI sooner rather than later. Well… now we’re here, and Anthropic doesn’t love the way it’s playing out.
And now, everyone — but maybe especially the Chinese government — is watching to see whether the United States’ AI regulatory approach takes the shape of a serious safety framework. Or whether it’s just another weapon for the White House to use against the companies and people that don’t bend the knee to the Trump admin. Like I said, it’s a real mess.
OK: Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field on the Claude Fable ban and the new AI regulatory landscape. Here we go.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Hayden Field, you’re a senior AI reporter here at The Verge. Welcome back to Decoder.
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