Prof. Alan Rozenshtein Interviewed by CNN About Anthropic Not Giving Into Defense Department Requests

Professor Alan Rozenshtein was interviewed by CNN about the continuing standoff between Anthropic and the Department of Defense. It has given Anthropic until later today for the firm to either allow the Pentagon unrestricted access to its most advanced AI model or face consequences. Threats include cutting the company off from government business by declaring it a supply chain threat or force it to provide its frontier model without restrictions under the Defense Production Act. The Defense Department says it will use Anthropic’s Claude AI system on its classified network and wants to be able to use it for “all lawful purposes.” Anthropic says that Claude cannot be used in autonomous weapons nor used in the mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. Some experts say the Pentagon’s threat is a signal to other AI companies potentially looking to make millions selling their services to the government, but without any restrictions. Prof. Rozenshtein said that if the Pentagon was simply unhappy with Anthropic’s conditions for its model, it could simply terminate the contract and get the AI model it wants from another company. He said, “What the government really wants is it wants is to keep using Anthropic’s technology, and it’s just using every source of leverage possible. This is a very powerful source of leverage.”