The World Cup has turned America into a discovery channel for the rest of the world.
And they are not handling it well.
In the best possible way.
Here is what they are discovering:
Free public restrooms. Europeans pay every time.
Free water at every restaurant. Just appears.
Free refills. Coffee. Sodas. Iced tea. Unlimited.
Free chips and salsa before you even order.
Free warm bread with dinner.
Ice in drinks like civilized people.
Air conditioning everywhere. Not a moral debate. A fact.
Parking lots attached to the actual place you are going.
Drive throughs where the food comes to the car while you sit in it.
Ranch dressing by the gallon.
Tex-Mex that cannot be explained only experienced.
Dental care that actually works.
Buccee’s. There are no words for Buccee’s.
Then they found the grocery stores.
Five of them within one mile.
Each one the size of an aircraft hangar.
Burgers. Steaks. Brisket. Ribs. Pulled pork. Lamb. Veal. Every cut of every animal ever domesticated by human civilization available in one refrigerated aisle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday.
The Germans stood in the meat section for forty five minutes.
In silence.
Processing.
They finally understand why we do not have trains.
We have roads wide enough for the cars we actually drive.
Parking lots the size of small European countries.
Airports in every city worth visiting.
Why would we need trains.
The Germans are taking ranch home by the bottle.
The Dutch found queso and briefly lost the ability to speak.
The Japanese are photographing HEB like it is the Louvre.
The Czechs are weeping in West, Texas.
Welcome to America!
The greatest country on earth.
I was told today by a 17-year-old that there was no way people were writing 10 page papers without Al.
Dude, I was writing 10 page papers without having read the book.
Strategy has acquired 1,587 BTC for $100 million to increase our $BTC Reserve to ₿846,842. We have also increased our USD Reserve by $100 million to $1.1 billion. $MSTR $STRC https://t.co/27PYXJN7GD
I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true:
— As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable.
— Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.)
— A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused.
— In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.”
— In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety.
— In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community.
— The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.
— Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.