Anthropic's White House Negotiations Improve After CEO Dario Amodei Replaced by Co-Founder

Anthropic's White House Negotiations Are Reportedly On Track After 'Weirdo' Dario Amodei Was Replaced

For almost two weeks, high-ranking team members at Anthropic have been in talks with the Trump Administration, trying to get a highly restrictive export control directive lifted. According to a new report from Wired, these talks weren't going well, and that was at least in part because CEO Dario Amodei was involved, but it's being reported that since Amodei left the talks, things are looking up. Per Wired, the White House is now talking to Tom Brown, another Anthropic co-founder (that's his entire job title according to his LinkedIn). An anonymous person involved in the calls reportedly told Wired "Tom Brown is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage." Amodei was reportedly hard to deal with, and, Wired's sources claim, wasn't being a good listener. Past reporting has claimed Amodei has a tendency to "rant" and that he "cannot control his emotions." If you've ever seen videos of Amodei, including ones made in friendly circumstances, you'll know his natural facial expression is a bit queasy, that he has a trumpet-like speaking voice, that he waves his arms when he speaks, and that he will sometimes not just break eye contact but tilt his whole head toward the ground while speaking. Judging from what's online, Brown has an overall nervous nerd speaking style, but a much warmer and more traditionally personable version. He seems to smile easily, and his voice is much softer and steadier than Amodei's. Wired says Brown is working on the talks alongside Sarah Heck, Anthropic's Head of Public Policy. Her conversation style -- again, from what's online -- comes across as enthusiastic and on-message, but also quite disciplined and cautious, the attributes a job as head of public policy would likely require. Anthropic needs the White House to clear its Claude Fable 5 AI model, the most advanced frontier model Anthropic makes available to consumers, for general use once again. Anthropic calls Fable 5 a "Mythos-class" model, meaning it's made with the same core technology as Claude Mythos Preview which Anthropic deemed too dangerous to be accessed by the public. Fable 5 came ostensibly stripped of capabilities that made it a potential cybersecurity threat, but according to multiple sources, Amazon researchers notified the White House shortly after it was released that jailbreaks could supposedly remove these safeguards easily. Before learning about the jailbreak issue, the White House was reportedly already worried that potential bad actors affiliated with Chinese interests had accessed the model, so it issued the export control order about three days after Fable 5 was released. It required Anthropic to prevent non-U.S. nationals from using Fable 5 (along with another, much more exclusive model, Mythos 5). Anthropic announced that it had pulled Fable 5 offline on June 12. Talks between Anthropic and the White House began shortly thereafter.

Anthropic's 'weirdo' CEO Dario Amodei replaced by co-founder in high-stakes White House meetings: report

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been replaced by his co-founder Tom Brown at high-stakes White House meetings - where the artificial-intelligence giant's outspoken boss was reportedly "being a weirdo," according to a report. Amodei and other top Anthropic workers raced to Washington after the US government slapped the AI giant's new "Mythos" and "Fable" bots with strict foreign export controls - but Amodei was difficult to talk to and didn't listen to officials' concerns, Wired reported. "Tom Brown is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage," one person familiar with the calls told the outlet. In recent days, the Trump administration has had multiple calls with Anthropic and talks are going well since Amodei has been replaced by Brown and Sarah Heck, the company's public policy chief, people familiar with the matter told Wired. The White House and Anthropic did not immediately respond to The Post's requests for comment. Earlier this month, the US government slapped the export controls on the ultra-powerful new AI models, after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned the administration that researchers had found evidence it was possible to bypass their safety guardrails. Anthropic responded by pulling the models offline entirely on June 12, claiming that was the only way to comply with the stringent new restrictions. The National Security Agency had been testing versions of Anthropic's AI tools and found that Mythos had identified vulnerabilities in highly secure government systems within mere hours, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. This does not necessarily mean the bots would be able to exploit those sensitivities within the same timeframe. Those tests were part of an Anthropic initiative known as Project Glasswing, which partnered with other companies and agencies to test the bots for any potential safety pitfalls - following reports that Mythos and Fable were so advanced that they could spark an AI doomsday. While talks between Anthropic and Trump officials have reportedly been going well, it is unclear whether the government will lift the export controls anytime soon. Some of the conversations have concerned what evidence Anthropic could provide that would alleviate the administration's concerns about potential jailbreaks of the new AI models, according to Wired. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is involved in the talks because his department oversees export controls, is facing a June 26 deadline from a bipartisan group of lawmakers who last week demanded answers to a list of questions about the path forward. It is unclear whether the department plans to respond to the letter by Friday. As The Post exclusively reported, Anthropic has been scrambling to cozy up to the government and resolve these security concerns, most recently pledging to work more closely with the White House in a proposal to Lutnick. Tensions between Anthropic and the US government started heating up earlier this year after Amodei refused to give the Pentagon unchecked access to his AI bots during contract negotiations - seeking limits for their use in mass surveillance and weaponry. After the government slapped Anthropic's latest models with export restrictions, the company argued the steps were unnecessary, saying it had simply flagged potential safety risks in the bots. But White House officials were irked that Anthropic had downplayed the safety risks in its own bots after years of warnings from Amodei about the potentially catastrophic risks from other AI models, The Post previously reported.