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.
David Friedberg: California’s Voting System Looks Fraudulent, But It’s Working Exactly as Designed
@friedberg believes California’s extremely loose election laws enable “appointments” not free elections.
Why? The voting data in LA makes no statistical sense.
“ Pratt's post-election mail-in ballots declined by 1/3.
So statistically, the population of people that send in their ballots late reduced for Pratt by 1/3, increased for Nithya Raman by 80%, and Karen Bass 10% less, if you just look at the mail-in ballots before and after election day as a comparison.
I don't know if there's a sociopolitical way that you can assess those statistics and assume that these are individuals casting their individual vote for who they think should be Mayor of LA.
Basically, the concentration of incremental votes that Nithya Raman got came around the Skid Row area in Los Angeles.
But when you look at the basic statistics of what happened in person, mail-in before, mail-in after Election Day, it becomes a real statistical quagmire on how did this sort of a sociopolitical shift happen in such a way that it did?
Now, there was a report published, and they highlighted the 2018 California midterm elections and the challenges that they saw arise in that midterm election because of some of the legislative changes that were made.
First, California Assembly Bill 1921 legalized the practice of unlimited ballot harvesting in the state. What that means is that any individual in the state of California has the right to go and collect ballots from any other individuals, regardless of relationship, fill them out, and send them in.
California, two years later, 18 months later, also passed a law that made it permanent that every person registered in the state of California would get a ballot, so tens of millions of ballots then get mailed out.
Then there was another series of laws that were passed that said anyone can register to vote. You don't need to prove your citizenship. You can use a gym membership card as an example.
So anyone can register to vote. There is no proof of ID when you get a ballot. There is no demonstration that the person who fills out the ballot has anything to do with the individual who's supposed to be voting that ballot, and it is legal for an individual to go out and collect hundreds or thousands of ballots, ship them in, and they will all qualify in these kind of mail-in ballot voting processes.
So there's nothing illegal or fraudulent going on. In fact, the system is operating exactly as intended.
It has been set up and structured in a way that with the right construct, you can get an individual appointed, not elected, but appointed to a particular role in government under a, quote, ‘free election’ in California.”
The Committee of Five—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman—was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago today.
Jefferson's draft of the document is here at the Library, and will be featured in a new exhibition opening July 3.
Happy to share that my Ted Talk from Vencouver in April just went live. In the heat of job anxiety, I believe there is only one thing that makes a job “truly safe.”
https://t.co/OcpYPXH9s6