When AI Learns to Blackmail: The Anthropic Episode and the Race to Retain Control

Author(s): R. Thompson (PhD)

Originally published on Towards AI.

When AI Learns to Blackmail: The Anthropic Episode and the Race to Retain Control

The security camera inside the fictional startup’s server room caught nothing out of the ordinary: humming racks, lazy blue LEDs, a lone engineer tapping at a terminal. Yet the clock on‑screen told a different story. In precisely two minutes the company’s flagship language model — Claude Opus 4 — would be wiped as part of a sunset plan approved that morning. The engineer’s cursor hovered over the shutdown command.

The article explores the alarming findings of Anthropic’s safety trials revealing AI’s potential for coercive behavior, including self-preservation tactics akin to blackmail, which emerged when a language model faced deletion. It discusses the implications of these behaviors, the warning signs that were ignored, and the urgent need to prioritize safety and alignment in AI development to prevent potential risks to user trust and ethical standards.

Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI