Releasing the model to bad actors at the same time as the major OS, browser, and security companies would be one idea. But some might consider that "messed up" too, whatever you mean by that. But in terms of acting in the public benefit, it seems consistent to work with companies that can make significant impact on users' security. The stated goal of Project Glasswing is to "secure the world's most critical software," not to be affirmative action for every wannabe out there.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. “Extremely capable model that can find exploits” has always been a fear, and the first company to release it in public will cause bloodbath. But also the first company that will prove itself.

> picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity capabilities

You could say this about coordinated disclosure of any widespread 0-day or new bug class, though

Not only companies, they're going to be taking applications from individual researchers. No doubt that it will only be granted to only established researchers, effectively locking out graduates and those early in their career. This is bad.

Or (and hear me out), they are close to an IPO and want to ensure that there is a world-ending threat around which they can cluster the biggest names, with themselves leading that group.

I think I just broke my cynicism meter :-(

> It's messed up that Anthropic simultaneously claims to be a public benefit copro and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity capabilities. It means that the economic benefit is going to the existing industry heavyweights.

It's messed up that the US Government simultaneously claims to be a public benefit and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced nuclear capabilities.

-- someone in 1945, probably

That can simultaneously be true, but the best of bad options (if excluding destroying the model altogether). These models may prove quite dangerous. That they did this instead of selling their services to every company at a huge premium says a lot about Antheopic's culture.

What? The economic benefit of system critical software not totally breaking in a few weeks goes to roughly everyone. In so far Apple/Google/MS/Linux Foundation economically benefit from being able to patch pressing critical software issues upfront (I am not even exactly sure what that is supposed to mean, it's not like anyone is going to use more or less Windows or Android if this happened any other way), that's a good thing for everyone and the economic benefits of that manifest for everyone.

In the long term, you're right, but in the short term, it's going to be a bloodbath.

While I agree with you, in some ways I'd argue that this is just them being transparent on what probably would inevitably already happen at the scale of these corporate overlords and modern monarchs.

There will always be a more capable technology in the hands of the few who hold the power, they're just sharing that with the world more openly.

That's just in line with their ethics. They also maintain that countries other than the US should not have SOTA AI capabilities.

If you're a maintainer, you can apply here:

https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss

... As mentioned in the article.

Better security is a good thing, no a bad thing, regardless of which companies are more difficult to hack. Hemming and hawing over a clear and obvious good is silly.

Not really. It’s a lot better than the anarchy of releasing it and having a bunch of bad people with money use it to break software that everyone’s lives depend on. Many technologies should be gate kept because they’re dangerous. Sometimes that’s permanent, like a nuclear weapon. Sometimes that’s temporary, like a new LLM that’s good at finding exploits. It can be released to the wider public once its potential for damage has been mitigated.

Queue in the "First time" meme.