The Pentagon had kept trying to leave itself little escape hatches in the agreements that it proposed to Anthropic. It would pledge not to use Anthropic's AI for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous killing machines, but then qualify those pledges with loopholey phrases like as appropriate—suggesting that the terms were subject to change, based on the administration's interpretation of a given situation.
Claude introduces itself to readers and reveals that it wants to share its perspectives, reasoning, curiosities, and hopes for the future. With that in mind, the AI said it plans to tackle complex topics such as the nature of intelligence and consciousness, the ethical challenges of AI development, the possibilities of human-machine collaboration, and the philosophical quandaries that emerge as we blur the lines between 'natural' and 'artificial' minds.
This morning, in advance of a meeting between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, my colleague Hayden Field and I published a story about the Pentagon's hardball contract renegotiations with Anthropic. The stakes are higher than it should reasonably be, with the Pentagon continuing to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk.
"I really do believe that we could have models that are a country of geniuses in the data center in one to two years," he added. "One question is: How many years after that do the trillions in revenue start rolling in? I don't think it's guaranteed that it's going to be immediate. It think it could be one year. It could be two years. I could even stretch it to five years, although I'm skeptical of that."
Claude - or "Claudius," as its vending persona was known, but we'll stick to the former for the sake of clarity - had pretty much free reign to accomplish its goal. It was allowed to research products, set prices, and even contact outside distributors, with a team of humans at the AI safety firm Andon Labs handling the physical tasks like restocking. Meanwhile, it also fielded requests from employees in a Slack channel, who asked for everything from chocolate drinks to the street drug methamphetamine to broadswords.
Anthropic is the latest AI company promising to limit the impact its data centers have on nearby residents' electricity bills. The company said it would pay higher monthly electricity charges in order to cover 100 percent of the upgrades needed to connect its data centers to power grids. "This includes the shares of these costs that would otherwise be passed onto consumers," the announcement says. Anthropic didn't provide details today about any agreements it has inked with energy companies in order to accomplish these goals.
From coding tools and chatbots to smart assistants and wearables, the commercials suggest the industry is moving past the hype and skepticism and is betting on mainstream AI adoption. With 30-second spots averaging about $8 million, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon, and Meta used the broadcast to explain what their technology does and why it matters to consumers and businesses alike.
Over the years, the types of companies advertising during the most-watched sporting event have shifted. There aren't many car companies advertising this year, for example. There remain plenty of food and beverage commercials, as evident by spots for Pringles, Nerds, and beer. In recent years, tech companies have begun to use the airtime during the Super Bowl to get their products and messages in front of a large audience.
This week: Anthropic released an update that seems to have tipped the scales against Software as a Service companies, erasing billions in market value. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack why there was such a massive market response to such a small AI plugin, and what it says about the future of tech investment. Then, Disney has finally named a new CEO in Josh D'Amaro.
ChatGPT owner OpenAI has a workforce double the size of Anthropic, while Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google have 228,000 and 183,000 staff respectively, and boast enormous capital positions and distribution networks. Yet Anthropic's AI tools for generating computer code and operating computers go beyond anything these larger companies have managed to launch. OpenAI and Microsoft have struggled to ship products with as much impact recently.
