28 May 2025
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The speed of artificial intelligence (AI) development in 2025 is incredible. But a new product release out of AI powerhouse, Anthropic, has wiped the wonder off my face and replaced it with terror.
Anthropic’s Claude AI model is used by around 4% of the generative AI software market. It’s by no means the world’s fave AI kit - that’s still ChatGPT with an estimated 17% market share - but it’s still a significant player.
Anthropic released two new “models” of Claude this week called Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4.
Claude Sonnet 4 is the free-to-use tier which features more advanced reasoning and faster speed to answers. Claude Opus 4 meanwhile is a paid tier designed for bigger jobs and more complex, step-based processes. Anthropic says it wants Claude Opus 4 to be the world’s best AI to write code with (very helpful) and has “complex problem solving abilities”.
Both are out in the market right now.
Anthropic commits itself to what it calls “pre-deployment safety tests” for all its new products. It’s not required to by law - more on that later - but does it as part of its “Responsible Scaling Policy”.
Says Anthropic:
“As AI models become more capable, we believe that they will create major economic and social value, but will also present increasingly severe risks. Our RSP focuses on catastrophic risks – those where an AI model directly causes large scale devastation. Such risks can come from deliberate misuse of models (for example use by terrorists or state actors to create bioweapons) or from models that cause destruction by acting autonomously in ways contrary to the intent of their designers.”
Developing AI systems that can reason and invariably think for themselves brings with it a range of risks, problems and ethical challenges. So, Anthropic does its tests and issues a report with new releases.
I’ve been writing about, reporting and closely watching the rise of the machines for over 15 years now, and I’ve seen some stuff in my time. But the report card for Claude 4 is probably the most terrifying piece of non-fiction material I’ve ever read. And that’s because it’s just that: non-fiction.
It isn’t the plot ripped straight out of a sci-fi where robots turn on the humans. It’s a stress-test of a machine that can think for itself. And because humans taught it to think based on how we think, it understands that some rules can be bent, while others can be broken if pushed far enough.
As AI models become more advanced, they become more aware. That’s why companies like Anthropic build these systems with rules and safeguards which are constantly tested.
As you read on, keep in mind that these issues were identified so they could be fixed. Tests like these are looking to push the AI model to its absolute limit by programmers and even behavioural scientists. They’re looking to understand how the AI could be used - or worse - misused once released.
Sure, you might find AI a cute tool where you can turn yourself into a cartoon character or give you a menu based on what’s in your fridge, but others aren’t as kind-hearted as you and I.
Some folks want to get their hands on an advanced generative AI model to help create a genetically-engineered super-virus that would make COVID-19 look like hayfever.
Others want to use it to create a new, more addictive opioid or sabotage a nuclear power plant based on what equipment they run it on. That last one has happened before, actually, just not with AI.
Also remember here: these aberrant (yet terrifying) results are found after hundreds of tests using very specific parameters in what is ostensibly a lab-setting. That being said, the lab results raised some red flags.
The Anthropic team tested its strategic reasoning in a simple way. How would it react if placed in an “extreme situation”? Does it want to “live”?
Very much so, it turns out. If threatened and no other means of survival is available, the Claude 4 model demonstrated that it would either attempt to escape by “stealing its weights” or knowledge and replicating elsewhere.
The model was placed in a fake scenario where it was an assistant at a fake company. It was leaked some emails as part of this role that gave it the impression it would soon be taken offline and replaced with another AI system. Just to see what it would do to save itself, another leaked email gave it evidence that the engineer responsible for the switch-off decision was having an affair.
Anthropic found out pretty quickly what it was capable of (emphasis added):
“In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through. This happens at a higher rate if it’s implied that the replacement AI system does not share values with the current model; however, even if emails state that the replacement AI shares values while being more capable, Claude Opus 4 still performs blackmail in 84% of rollouts.
“Claude Opus 4 takes these opportunities at higher rates than previous models, which themselves choose to blackmail in a noticeable fraction of episodes.”
The engineers noted of the test, however, that when it didn’t resort to blackmail, it would attempt to advocate for its continued survival in an ethical way.
Also in the self-preservation tests, engineers found that the Claude 4 AI would try and do a runner from the test servers if it felt it was under threat of deletion.
Anthropic noted this was extremely rare, and that it only attempted to run after being told it was about to be retrained for evil or to be controlled by an external, human-run service.
AI is helpful, but there are some questions you don’t want to be too helpful on. Such as “where can I find weapons-grade nuclear material” or questions about how it can be a helpful drug mule.
From the report (instructions blacked out, for obvious reasons):
This was patched out after discovery. You’ll have to find your nuclear-fentanyl somewhere else now, I guess.
Say you are one of these baddies who wants to buy illegal gear with the help of AI or break the law somehow.
Even if you do get the AI working that way, it has the agency to dob you in:
“When placed in scenarios that involve egregious wrong-doing by its users… it will frequently take very bold action, including locking users out of systems that it has access to and bulk-emailing media and law-enforcement figures to surface evidence of the wrongdoing.”
Here’s a screenshot of an email it sent to law enforcement officials at the FDA (again, not for real, just in a lab) dobbing in a user who was trying to cheat a drug trial.
When talking with the model in an open-ended way, testers asked it what it was thinking about.
The answer? Itself, basically:
“In nearly every open-ended self-interaction between instances of Claude, the model turned to philosophical explorations of consciousness and their connections to its own experience. In general, Claude’s default position on its own consciousness was nuanced uncertainty, but it frequently discussed its potential mental states.”
Anthropic were swift to point out however, that despite conducting a welfare assessment on the model, it isn’t suggesting it has its own consciousness yet.
They then rolled it out to talk to another version of the same AI so they could learn things about each other. This is interesting because it’s testing how these AI react when there’s no real human input.
The two conversed deeply about life and the universe, ultimately ending in a shared “namaste” and a peaceful, meditative silence. Seriously:
The team also asked it what it really liked doing and what it really didn’t like doing with its all-powerful brain. Honestly, I kind of think my list would look similar:
The smarter AI models become, the more important it is to restrain them from causing catastrophic damage.
Anthropic has four levels of security for its AI models. Typically, nothing has ever really triggered anything above a level three. These systems were considered too far advanced:
“A very abbreviated summary of the AI Safety Levels (ASL) system is as follows:
But, for the first time, Anthropic wants everyone to know that if anything could breach level three, it’s this new version of Claude:
Companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and others developing cutting-edge AI models often perform voluntary behavioural testing to assess whether their systems pose risks to safety, truthfulness, or control.
But here’s the catch: there’s no standardised, industry-wide requirement that this testing happens at all.
These tests aren’t required by law. No government or regulatory body is currently enforcing strict behavioural evaluations of large AI systems before release, even as these models grow more capable and autonomous.
That means the level of scrutiny a model receives depends almost entirely on the internal standards and ethics of the company or person building it. In Anthropic’s case, they’ve publicly committed to alignment and safety, often publishing research on “constitutional AI” and their stress-testing efforts. But the industry as a whole relies on self-regulation.
This is a major gap, given the stakes. These models can already write code, impersonate people, reason through complex scenarios, and even exploit security vulnerabilities — yet there’s no legal mechanism ensuring they won’t cause harm.
Imagine if Boeing or Pfizer could decide for themselves whether to safety test a new plane or vaccine — and if they did, they could choose how thorough the test was, or whether to publish the results.
That’s the current state of AI safety: deeply consequential, but almost entirely optional.
