Who decides when AI is too dangerous?

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**Nilay Patel** (1:51)
Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and 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 Decoder, it's because something has gone wrong in the world of AI. 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 is based on. Those controls restricted foreign nationals, even those working for Anthropic in the United States from accessing these models. Anthropic then took Fable in Mythos offline for everyone, because the company said it was worried it would not be able to restrict access and reasonably comply with that order otherwise. As you might imagine, this is all a giant mess. Hayden actually just published a fantastic play by play on The Verge, about 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 to go on the show and walk me through the timeline and what it all means. The situation is ongoing. As of Tuesday, when we were 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 and 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. 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 ban and the new AI regulatory landscape. Here we go.
Hayden Field, you're the Senior AI Reporter here at The Verge. Welcome back to Decoder.

**Hayden Field** (4:19)
Thanks, great to be here.

**Nilay Patel** (4:20)
It's always chaos when you're here, Hayden. That's what I've come to discover.

**Hayden Field** (4:24)
It really is. Also, my rule is still in effect in that it's always a Friday. Stuff always hits the fan on a Friday, and this was no different.

**Nilay Patel** (4:31)
Particularly 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.