Anthropic says it stopped several instances of foreign scientists using its AI agents to create possible biological weapons, the New York Times reports.
The alarming news was revealed in a lengthy report released by the Claude chatbot-maker on Thursday. Notably, it comes amid heightened AI safety concerns after a former Anthropic employee accused the company of irresponsibly building powerful AI systems despite knowing they’re destructive.
According to the report, scientists in several countries where Anthropic has blocked access to its models subverted these controls and tried to “obfuscate the purpose of their research to evade our safeguards.”
In one case in May, a scientist asked Claude to help write an application to receive a state-sponsored grant for an eyebrow-raising project: to engineer more harmful mutations of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus, which can cause fever and debilitating joint pain. The project, Anthropic believes, was intended to be carried out at a military research institute.
