YouSaid · the spoken record

Dario Amade

lines on the record: 49
first: 2026-06-18
most recent: 2026-06-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Becoming a personality game over the next few days, anthropic compromises in some way. They try to communicate better, whatever. And then in a couple of days, this gets rolled back. And then, you know, I've seen some rumors that the Trump administration is trying to have a stake in anthropic and open AI and ownership stake. So, you know, there could be a lot of different resolutions to that here. We'll see, but I definitely can't foresee this as it exists right now continuing for more than a couple of days. I mean, the industry is just aghast at this.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, it's very difficult to predict how this administration is going to act as we saw with the supply chain risk thing. Even though a lot of government agencies were big fans of Claude, I thought that that was going to be rolled back eventually, but they just signed deals with seven other companies and said, okay, we're good. Like, you know, even if you guys were fans of Claude, whatever, here's seven other options for you. It's anyone's guess right now. I do think that the foreign nationals thing is going to be rolled back. I mean, I just can't imagine that after all the hubbub that the administration has, you know, created about American AI has to win, you know, the Hegzeth memo from January 9th about how speed at all costs. I just think this administration is so focused on winning an AI that there's no way they're going to continue with that rule. But who knows? So I think I could see this.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CEOs are saying Does this end? What are the next steps here? There's meetings happening this week. People are going to be hearing this on Thursday. There's a chance Anthropic is just back on the market. There's a chance it's not. But after this, it seems like everybody wants a process. Where do you think this ends?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is typically used by the villain in the story. So I think it's, I don't know, there's a big race happening right now, and I totally agree with Jack Clark that, you know, it might be good to slow things down a bit. If everyone could agree, if everyone could agree, which is very huge, long shot and, you know, especially it'd be very difficult to get other countries to agree as well. But we are definitely building the technology much faster than we can think about the implications of it. And we have been for a long time.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's like what we've seen a lot for decades. And I think it's starting to happen now with the mythos stuff. You know, fable is the watered down version and, you know, enterprise and governments have access to the more powerful version. There's a lot of different opinions on that. Like OpenAI, one of its biggest marketing pushes right now is, oh, Anthropic wants the most powerful AI to only be in the hands of the elites. And we want to bring it to the public. So there's a bunch of different marketing pushes right now. Everyone's just kind of using everything to their advantage or to paint their competitors badly. Anthropic included. So it's like, you know, I think the race is just heating up so intensely that, you know, the AI companies at the forefront are doing anything they can to win at all costs. Some because they think that they are the best and most moral winner, which I think can always be a big issue, as we've seen in like every sci-fi or, you know, fantasy movie for the great.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just Is there a version of this where we just treat AI like military technology from the jump and the public gets watered down version of the military technology? Because that seems to be the risk profile that the Trump administration is operating within, right? This is fundamentally offensive technology. We can deploy it against our enemies. We can use it to attack the banks. Everyone is worried about the security implications here. Is there a world in which we just start there and then say to deploy to the public, to consumers, you got to cut this way down. We're not going to sell F-22s to the public, but we can sell Ford Raptors to the public. Like there's some version of this, right? Where it's like the technology gets cut way down for the public with the bleeding edge is just fundamentally for the military.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know a lot of companies do downplay risks of different systems. Like, you know, we've seen a bunch of AI CEOs, including Anthropic, I believe, talk about how, you know, jobs aren't all going to be replaced. It's okay. You know, there's, I always take all this stuff with a huge grain of salt because at the end of the day, whatever AI company you're talking about, whether it's anthropic or not, they all have the incentives to turn a profit and make money. At all costs, and especially if they become a public company, which they are about to. So people like to paint anthropic one way and other competitors another, but they're all pursuing the same goal. They just are doing it a little bit differently.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it would be really bad if a system that can flag high level vulnerabilities in our global infrastructure that we use, like your bank system or a government website could just be used by bad actors if it fell into the wrong hands. Yeah, that's pretty bad. And so, you know, I think. It comes down to communication. Like, yep, it's important to talk about the risks and not downplay them, but also, you know, if you do that and then you make a mistake or something unexpected happens, you got to deal with the consequences. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there for sure. And I also think that.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's a combination. I think that the marketing speak is definitely backfiring. You know, if you say slings that dangerous and then a researcher unearths something that maybe wasn't quite meant to be possible, yeah, people are going to freak out. And so that's why I'm kind of like, you know, I can see the first thing happening to anyone. I can't see the rest of it, the way that the cards fell. But yeah, I think it's partly there. You know, I came back to haunt them. You know, it was a little bit on them in terms of the hype. But I also think that they are trying to be honest in some ways about the risk that this technology can pose.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the weirder aspects of this is that Anthropic itself is the company that most We should stop this, but they're also in the front line of model capability. By all accounts, Mythos is the most powerful model that exists today. Is Anthropic just getting itself in trouble? Is this just marketing strategy for them that's backfiring?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can be really swayy, you know. I think they have dinner one time and then things might shift a little bit. And to be fair, like many politicians are that way. We'll see. Maybe after this executive order, you know, the 60 days are up. Maybe we see some changes that surprise me. I don't know.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's important to remember how the general public feels because this is who AI is really affecting at the end of the day. And yeah, the rise in AI populism and the fact that people are upset. There's data center protests going on everywhere. People are even in extreme cases like attacking AI CEOs' homes are attempting to. There is a lot of disquiet here and people feel like they're getting replaced. They feel like their jobs are getting replaced. You know, I was listening to Seattle City Council hearing recently and a lot of AI engineers were testifying saying that they got laid off because of AI and they were engineers. So I think both AI leaders and the government often kind of are pretty distanced from what the general public is feeling about this technology. And it's important to note. So I think, you know, we'll see how that impacts, if at all, regulation that comes out. I don't have high hopes for a lot of regulation under this administration because.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There haven't been a lot of really robust solutions proposed recently because of this current administration. They've had a really light touch approach to regulation. So no one's really surfacing those. Now that that might be changing, I think we'll see more robust frameworks proposed. And I just hope that They're not voluntary. AI companies already do a lot of voluntary stuff. If you're going to regulate, do it. There's not, I don't think you need to, there's a lot of different opinions on how light touch or heavy touch regulation should be, but I do think that voluntary frameworks are pretty. Pretty watered down. You know what I mean? It's like we already have those. So what's next? There's a big, I think.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And any that had to Almost feels like the industry needs to push for a more considered regulatory approach, right? That they need to say, this is chaos, this can't be how we operate. Every new model can't be forced to contend with panicked phone calls on the weekend. What kind of system would you build, right? If you wanted a more rigorous review process here, is it they just submit their models to the government and the government says what's dangerous and not? Is it more industry-based? What are the solutions being proposed?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not seeing a lot of regulation and any of that has happened got rolled back. So, you know, maybe we'll go back in that direction. I do see us going somewhere there, but maybe not even as much as that first rung.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Down. It's like they come out with swinging and then they talk to some AI CEOs and they're like, oh, okay, let's roll it back a little bit. So who knows, honestly. But, you know, the reason I became an AI reporter is because I felt like there was no real regulation in the space. And this was even before ChatGPT. And journalism is a way to kind of shine a light on what's going on in the industry. And I think, you know, still six years later,”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could see us going back there because a lot of activists and academics, I interviewed a ton of people in the industry at the time, like ranging across a ton of different viewpoints. And most of them believed that the Biden era executive order wasn't quite enough. Some people thought it was a good first step. And I think that's why I could see us going back there, because it wasn't seen as being extremely aggressive. If anything, it was seen as being like, you know, a good first step in the direction, but really just one rung on the ladder, you know. And I think that that's why I could see, you know, the current administration going back there, because it wasn't that far. You know, I will say AI companies will lobby against even that little step. They did. But I mean, they did. They did deeply. But I could see it being, you know, going back there, but a little more voluntary, which again, all these things usually get water.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Biden administration, like notable for a lack of personality and people, it was very technocratic, very rules-based in a way that I think people often thought was bloodless. But the Biden administration, they did put forward an executive order that had things like transparency reviews and research requirements for the frontier models. Trump came into office, he wiped all that out. He said, we're not going to regulate these companies. And now it seems like we're just headed back there, right? If you're going to put out an ultra powerful model, the administration wants control of it. Certainly they will use the bluntest instrument they have in the form of export controls. But we're going to get back to a more fine-grained, more rigorous approach to how these models are deployed and used and who gets to use them. Was it a mistake to wipe out the Biden framework? Are we headed back to that framework? Where do we think this goes now?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the past however many years, but now it's being represented in AI regulation. It's just there's not really a rhyme or reason right now. And I don't think that Anthropics communications with the administration help. You know, if you don't take their call the second they call, if you're not flying to the White House to have dinner. It probably hurts your relationship a little bit in a presidency that seems to be pretty relationship based. A lot of the time.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the way it's been perceived by some reports. I mean, I think that's definitely part of it. Some reports have said, you know, he doesn't know how to talk to the administration in that he doesn't kowtow as much. He doesn't, you know, know how to play the game. I think that's part of it. I think the other part of it is that the Trump administration isn't quite sure how they're going to regulate things and they're being, you know, President Trump is being pulled in different directions by any conversation he has. Sometimes he feels like it needs to be more regulated. Sometimes he thinks it needs to be less. Like if he's talking to AI CEO, it seems like he's like, yeah, you know what? I trust them. We're good. Let them go ahead. We got to beat China. In other cases, you know, he sees, you know, the public is going through a pretty anti-AI era right now. You know, there's a lot, there's a rise in AI populism. And, you know, he's saying, oh, well, actually, the Everman kind of doesn't like AI. Oh, maybe I should regulate. So I think that there's just, it's kind of something we've seen with the administration a bunch.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really is. Is it just as simple as Dario Amade doesn't go to the White House? He doesn't give Trump gifts. I mean, Sam Altman does press conferences with Donald Trump. Sundar Bachai attended the inauguration”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Covered under it. There was a voluntary partnership of like a 30 day pre release review. It's voluntary. So I just think, you know, I'm not, it's funny because I'm not like, oh, anthropics totally in the right here at all, but it's just interesting because in this situation, there's just so much like misdirection and scrambling and just weirdness that it's rare that you see me feeling kind of bad for an AI company. It really is like I am not like, oh, yeah, like they're doing great. All AI.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or part of the conversation that's coming to light. So, first they say, oh, well, what if China had access? A source I spoke with said, that's a rumor from a few weeks ago, from way before Fable 5 or those five came out, and that it was referencing like a Chinese telecom company that the administration had previously approved to have access to Mythos Preview and that when the administration said, oh, actually, you know what, we changed our mind, let's take them off anthropic immediately took them off and revoked that access. So I think that's an old rumor. Then we're also saying the executive order thing where rumors have come to light that, oh, anthropic wasn't complying with the Trump administration's executive order. Well, that executive order, it hasn't gotten into effect yet. He only signed it on June 2nd. It's like, you know, two weeks ago, it takes 60 days for them to figure out which models are going to be.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't think they would have made this for a nationals rule that has like, you know, sent shockwaves through the whole industry and the world. One of the sources I spoke with said he already knew that backup contracts were being signed with non-US companies right now. Open weight models were being deployed on alternative hardware arrangements because now companies everywhere are saying, oh, wow, we got to make political risk part of our business plan now. We don't really know what's going to happen with American AI. Let's make some backup plans here, which is not good for the industry. And so I think it's just interesting that the Trump administration is so afraid of China overtaking us, yet, you know, they're kind of willing to kneecap one of their champions, as it were, in the industry. But I also think it's interesting that the reasoning from the Trump administration that's been coming out day by day seems to differ. So every day they seem to have kind of a new”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The administration is trusting these companies to kind of. Tell it what it should be doing. We've seen that a bunch with, you know, any regulation that has happened or like it has become voluntary, you know, lots of drafts have been adjusted after the Trump administration talks to AI companies. They already don't like anthropic. You know, there's already a big trust breakdown between the two from the supply chain risk thing, from the lawsuit, from drawing red lines. And so I can't imagine that this exact situation would have played out if this had been a competitor. I mean, OpenAI has a mythos semi-equivalent. Again, like, you know, no company is really saying theirs is as good, but they say it's, you know, pretty good. Microsoft, Google, I can't, I think that the freak out would have still happened, but I cannot imagine the rest of it would have played out the way it was. I think they would have given them more time. I think they would have had more of a conversation.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some rigor and conversation about how effective their fix is. How do you put that together that on the one hand the Trump administration is anti-AI regulatory efforts? On the one hand, they say we got to do whatever we want with the models, make them as powerful as you can. And then here, the model is too powerful and has to be pulled before any foreign national can even look at.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A real element of this is that it's always anthropic. Anthropic has the most contentious relationship with the Trump administration. They were designated a supply chain risk by the Department of War. But the posture here is different than the usual anthropic drama. Historically, anthropic has said we don't want you to use our tools for X, Y, and Z, and the Trump administration has said, no, we get to do whatever we want with the AI tools. That's why they were designated supply chain risk by the Department of War. They said, we have some red lines about how we want to be used in the military context. And Pete Hexeth said, nope, I'm going to do whatever I want. You have to allow all lawful purposes. That's the line. And because you won't, you're a supply chain risk. There's a lawsuit that's being argued about. Here, it's the opposite. The Trump administration is worried that the model is too powerful and can be used for too many things. Anthropic seems to think that that belief is overblown, that the administration is overplaying a thing that they can fix. They just need the time to do it.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not these skills are not unique to Fable 5. The skills in question as part of the jailbreak. Mythos is obviously more powerful than Fable because it doesn't have safeguards. But when it comes to Fable and the problems that were brought to light by Amazon, it seems like those problems are not unique to Fable and that GPT 5.5 can also achieve those. So it's like something that a lot of people in the industry are asking is why anthropic?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Amazon typically does a lot of red teaming just normally. It's kind of just part of their process. So it makes sense that this would have been tested and then unearthed. But what's interesting is why Andy Jassy called the Trump administration about it. I'm not sure. Maybe it was a typical call that was already happening and he just happened to mention something offhand. Maybe he was calling them and saying, yeah, good thing you did the executive order because XYZ don't know. But what is interesting, and I'm glad you asked this because a lot of the sources I spoke with said that the stuff in the alleged jailbreak and in the Amazon white paper that's been circulating, all of it could be achieved by open AI's GPT 5.5 and some other models. So that's the allegation that this is.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every competitor in the space that also has what they call a semi-equivalent mythos product. So yeah, there's just, it's really, it seems really disorganized and it's very interesting that this often ends up in a scramble with all these CEOs kind of trying to race to kowtow to the Trump administration without really being grounded a lot of times in science or evidence that really like matches what's going on. I feel like the level of freak out is not usually matching.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On it. And then Andy Jassy hears about it. He makes this call, everything hits the fan, which makes sense because if you are not an AI expert, and even if you are an AI expert, maybe you're not an expert on cybersecurity and how exactly these systems work, of course. So you're going to freak out. I mean, it's kind of understandable, but what is really strange is what happened after that. So, you know, making this phone call, the administration becoming aware, okay, but what I think is really weird is the 90 minute ultimatum them not giving them additional details when they said, hey, let's talk about it. Are you talking about the vulnerability we're already aware of? Or are you talking about something else? And can you just tell us about it so then we can talk about it? They said no 90 minutes do it or die and then making it so that no foreign national can access the system ever. That is what's really strange.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's a combination of a couple things. One, it's the fact that, like you mentioned, a lot of these guys are not experts in AI. And something that I'm not saying it's not like any jailbreak of this is obviously, you know, serious and worth considering, but I think that it's the type of thing when you don't have direct knowledge of how these systems work, you're going to take a really black and white immediate like I think that These guys weren't experts. Andy Jassy hears about this from his own researchers. His own researchers, by the way, who had been going back and forth with Anthropic for a couple days on this, so they weren't, you know, calling the president about it. They're like, okay, let's just discuss this and kind of, you know, figure out what we can do here. The researchers allegedly didn't seem to think it was, you know, the end of the world. They're just like, oh, we uncovered this. You know, let's discuss. Anthropic was working.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, there's a lot going on, very dramatic. All the sources I spoke with over the past couple days were saying the whole tech industry and the cybersecurity community in particular are just talking about how one source told me Beijing is laughing at us right now. It was interesting because some cybersecurity leaders in the space came together to write a public letter and they said, look, not all of us believe in regulation, but if you're going to regulate it, this is not the way, which I think is just kind of indicative of this whole situation.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is virtually joining all these meetings. I can confirm he was not at a wellness retreat, which is what some reports say, but they won't tell me where he is, but he's not at a wellness retreat. Actually, not at a wellness.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, if you're, say, Bank of America and you have access to Mythos 5 and you're using it to plug vulnerabilities in your system and you're not a US citizen, you can't use it. Same with a random, just regular individual using Fable 5. Same with a anthropic researcher who is not a US citizen. So Anthropic did the only thing it could really do in the situation and they said, okay, we got to sideline both these models. We can't confirm that we can't in like one minute figure out a way to make sure no non-US citizens are using the models. So that's what happened. I mean, it was a crazy couple of hours. Anthropic comes out with a statement later that night saying they're trying to work with the Trump administration on this, spent all weekend virtually meeting with the Trump administration and then flying three employees out who I detail in the piece we just published to DC to talk to them in person. Notably Dario was not there in person.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were asking for more details. They're like, okay, let's talk about this. Are you talking about the research we're already aware of? Are you talking about something different? What is the jailbreak you're talking about? They're trying to get more details and talk to the administration. I think the administration was also mad that Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic, didn't call back until an hour and 15 minutes after that first call. So Anthropic called back 15 minutes in. It took Dario an hour and 15 minutes to call back. So there was a lot going on here. By the time, you know, they're talking, you know, whatever, the 90 minute deadline passes. The Trump administration says, okay, that's it. Yep, we're hitting you with export controls. And so that is when they told Anthropic no foreign national can use either of these models. And you have to just make sure that that is the case. No foreign national, whether they work at anthropic or not, aka.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, 90 minute ultimatum, and they said we need to figure out how to fix this jailbreak that's come to light. Anthropic got on the phone with the Trump administration within 15 minutes of that first call.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is kind of the timeline of last week. Mid last week, anthropic was made aware of some research that Amazon researchers were doing and that they had uncovered a potential jailbreak, something they were pretty worried about. They sent it over to Anthropic. Anthropic was kind of going back and forth with the Amazon researchers talking about it. And they were discussing like whether it was really a jailbreak or whether it was like not that big of a deal essentially. Apparently reports say that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy then got worried about it and called maybe Scott Bessant, some member of the Trump administration on Friday and talked about his concerns. Trump administration freaked out immediately. They immediately call anthropic. They're like, they send them a message actually and they say, look, you need to shut this down.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I talked to some independent red teamers about this, and before the Amazon white paper was circulating, before this allegation of a jailbreak was The guardrails held up, like they were, I was expecting it to be a little bit easier to jailbreak. They were saying they had tried a lot of stuff and nothing was working. So that's not my experience when I usually talk to independent red teamers. They're like, yeah, I got it to break here. I got it to break there. In this case, they were saying it held up pretty well. Now, what happened this time is according to a source familiar with the negotiations who was directly involved with the negotiations. I spoke with yesterday.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's the thing that's confusing me where there's a contrary because the guardrails are so strict and then something happened. Made the government think Fable was so dangerous that it needed to be pulled. What happened?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Fable is a mythos with the security guardrails. And when it first came out, there was a wave of controversy, right? AI researchers, security researchers, found those guardrails were actually preventing them from doing research and seeing what fable was capable of. Because if they tried to push the boundary, it would downgrade them to Anthropics' previous models.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, places that need to patch up all their frameworks before, you know, bad actors come in and exploit those vulnerabilities. Now fast forward to last week and They released not only Mythos 5, which is the first official mythos, before it was Mythos preview, so we skipped straight to five. Then they also released on the same day Fable 5, which was the very first public version of Mythos class models, aka same underlying framework, but now tons of safeguards built on top to hopefully stop the public from accessing this super dangerous bianthropic's own admission model that could, you know, mess up everything. So yeah, that's what they released and they spent a long time hyping this up and talking about how dangerous it was. And then it kind of came back to haunt them later.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Question, and I asked them the same thing when they came out with this like a week ago, or by the time we published this, it'll be like a week and a half ago because, yeah, AI companies are really bad at naming things and it's always very confusing. But the situation is Mythos is the underlying model that is powering both Mythos 5 and Fable 5. Fable is a new thing. They haven't had Fable 1, 2, 3, or 4. They just immediately started with Fable 5. Very confusing. But Fable is the watered down or safeguarded version of Mythos 5. So when they came out with Mythos preview in April, Anthropic kept saying, you know, they were really hyping up. They were saying this is potential cyber weapon. It's got to be never released to the public, at least until safeguards catch up, et cetera, et cetera. We're only going to release it to Enterprise and governments, aka cyber defenders is what they called them.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This podcast is going to come out on a Thursday. We're recording on a Tuesday. We'll see what happens over the next two days. But I think the big picture here of how the United States government should regulate AI and what that means for American AI companies on the world stage is open. I don't think it's going to be resolved with whatever happens with Fable. So let's try to understand the whole story and then pull those themes out of it because they're just going to keep coming back around again and again and again. I think with every new model released now. So let's start at the start. What is Claude Mythos? What is Fable? How do they relate to each other?”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It's crazy. And the fact that all these talks were happening all over the weekend. And then Monday, still no resolution. I'm surprised that things aren't resolved yet, but yeah, lots of drama.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Articulate when it comes to the government regulating AI, there's a real what if it all went crazy on Friday? So we all had to think about it over the weekend. And then I think this has been basically true throughout the Trump administration. The scramble to put it all back together on Monday is immediate.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, now we're here. And Anthropic doesn't love the way it's playing out. And now everyone, but maybe especially the Chinese government, is watching to see whether the United States AI regulatory approach takes the shape of a serious safety framework or whether it's just another weapon for the White House to use against companies and people that don't bend the knee to the Trump administration. Like I said, it's a real mess. Okay, Verge Senior AI reporter Hayden Field on the Claude Fable Band and the new AI regulatory landscape. Here we go. You have a senior AI reporter here at the Verge. Welcome back to Dakota.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Otherwise. As you might imagine, this is all a giant mess. Hidden actually just published a fantastic play by play on the Verge, but how this all went down last Friday and the scramble through the weekend from both sides to figure out exactly what happened and how it might all get resolved. So I wanted her to come on the show and walk me through the timeline and what it all means. The situation is ongoing. As of Tuesday, when we're recording this episode, Fable is still offline. In fact, if you boot up Claude, it tells you right above the chat box window. Fable 5 is currently unavailable. Yet, as you'll hear Hayden explain, whether Fable comes back online this week or not, the ripple effects of the government's feud with Anthropic have far-reaching consequences for the tech industry and the United States AI regulatory regime. There's also a big irony here, and you'll hear Hayden I talk about it quite a bit. Anthropic has spent years arguing that AI might soon be powerful enough to be dangerous and that the government needed to get serious about regulating AI sooner rather than later.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Dakota. I'm Nilai Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. In Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. My guest today is Hayden Field, the senior AI reporter here at the Verge. Often when Hayden shows up on Dakota, it's because something has gone wrong in the world of AI. And last weekend, that something was a pretty intense mix of anthropic, the Trump administration, and Anthropic's new model, Claude Fable 5. On Friday, not even a week after Anthropic released Fable 5 to the public, the United States government said it was imposing export controls on that new model, as well as the underlying mythos model that Fable was based on. Those controls restricted four nationals, even those working for anthropic in the United States, from accessing these models. Anthropic then took Fable and Mythos offline for everyone, because the company said it was worried it would not be able to restrict access and reasonably comply with it.”
2026-06-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Who decides when AI is too dangerous? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT