The White House Is Making Up Its Rules for AI in Real Time
Key takeaways
- Throughout this entire debacle, Anthropic doesn’t believe it violated any concrete procedures or rules laid out by the Trump administration, according to a person close to the company.
- This saga proved to me that we’re now officially in the Wild West era of American AI regulation.
- The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked efforts to impose guardrails on the AI industry, often arguing the rules could hamper US innovation and lead the country to fall behind rivals like China.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story It’s been nearly a week since the Trump administration sent an export control directive to Anthropic, forcing one of the world’s leading AI labs to pull its most advanced models offline. After days of negotiations between Anthropic and the White House, the two still remain at odds about how to bring Claude Mythos and Fable 5 back. Why? Well, it depends whom you ask.
Throughout this entire debacle, Anthropic doesn’t believe it violated any concrete procedures or rules laid out by the Trump administration, according to a person close to the company. But the White House contends that Anthropic behaved recklessly, demonstrating that it can’t be trusted to safely roll out frontier technology.
This saga proved to me that we’re now officially in the Wild West era of American AI regulation. While there are few laws on the books governing frontier AI development, that doesn’t mean companies won’t end up in trouble with Trump’s White House when they cross unspoken lines.