(Bloomberg) — Anthropic PBC, which has pledged to make artificial intelligence guardrails a priority, has loosened its central safety policy, saying the move is necessary to keep pace in a rapidly changing field.
The company in 2023 said in its Responsible Scaling Policy that it would delay AI development that might be dangerous. In a Tuesday blog post, Anthropic said it was updating its rules to say it would no longer do so if it believes it lacks a significant lead over a competitor.
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“The policy environment has shifted toward prioritizing AI competitiveness and economic growth, while safety-oriented discussions have yet to gain meaningful traction at the federal level,” Anthropic said in its post.
The move is surprising because Anthropic has consistently tried to distinguish itself through its safety stance as it races with OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Elon Musk’s xAI Corp. for dominance in what many view as a revolutionary new technology. Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic, used to work at OpenAI and left in part because of his concerns that the startup was prioritizing commercialization and speed over safety.
Both companies are now pushing for initial public offerings as soon as this year, seeking to tap investor interest in AI. Anthropic was recently valued at $380 billion, while OpenAI is raising money at a valuation of more than $850 billion.
“From the beginning, we’ve said the pace of AI and uncertainties in the field would require us to rapidly iterate and improve the policy,” an Anthropic spokeswoman said.
The updated policy, which was earlier reported by Time, coincides with a growing dispute with the US Defense Department over Anthropic’s insistence on guardrails for use of its Claude AI tool. The Pentagon on Tuesday threatened to invoke a Cold War-era law to compel Anthropic to allow the US military to use the startup’s technology.
Earlier this month Mrinank Sharma, a senior safety researcher, said he was leaving Anthropic. “I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation,” he wrote in a letter to colleagues that he posted to X.
“The world is in peril,” he wrote. “And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment.”
He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the company’s change to its safety policy.
