If they succeed here, won't they have to gate access to this feature, too? For the same reasons as, "if I so much as mention mitochondria, it downgrades me to Opus."
Step 1. Make it so Claude can do anything — the whole point of AGI
Step 2. Wait, if the user can do Anything, that would be Very Bad!
Step 3. Err on the safe side with blanket bans of entire fields
The latter actually seems to me a sensible reaction to e.g. the compartmentalization used in the large scale cyber attack using Claude last year. Where they were able to do Bad Thing by dividing it into many, many Small, Seemingly Harmless Things.
Gated access sounds bad (and I agree it sounds bad!) but it might actually be the only sensible response to such a set of conditions. I'm not sure though.
--
I saw some studies recently which showed LLMs provide much more detailed information to expert users. So we can distinguish between competence and incompetence based on use of language, and that is a reasonable metric for harm reduction.
But I don't think we can reliably detect "user has harmful intentions", at least not at a sufficient level of sophistication of the attacker.
MiracleRabbit 11 hours ago [-]
I just wait until a Opensource model inhaled all the chemistry books and papers. Lol.
They are following closely and the best offer 80-90% of the performance and come with a very small fraction of the costs.
inigyou 5 hours ago [-]
There are no open source LLMs, only LLMs you can download.
echelon_musk 10 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't the US gov. outlaw the open source models?
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
Applicable to only those of the US (who choose to comply), which would mean giving non-US an advantage, which is a distinct no-no. They tried to restrict Fable to only-US, but that backfired since the world isn't at all clean cut, resulting in full unavailability of the model
MiracleRabbit 10 hours ago [-]
Streisand effect
Deepseek.v4.Pro.RePacked.LLMBoyz.part1.zstd
Daviey 8 hours ago [-]
Will each part be a 1.44mb rar/ace file?
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
Damn this reminds me of my days going around with a stack of - mostly recovered - diskettes.
MiracleRabbit 7 hours ago [-]
And screaming loud Keygen music
squidbeak 8 hours ago [-]
Without international treaty and regulation restricting frontier capabilities globally, any attempt to outlaw open source models will only be as effective as King Canute ordering the tide to turn. Unless the USA fancies bombing those who refuse.
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
China is definitely refusing. And definitely will bomb back.
4 hours ago [-]
throw1234567891 5 hours ago [-]
And build the wall, all around.
lelanthran 6 hours ago [-]
How would that affect the world?
15155 4 hours ago [-]
Prior restraint?
OutOfHere 4 hours ago [-]
It cannot. The only available law is an export control law. A restriction on an open model would be strongly unconstitutional due to a freedom of speech guarantee in the Constitution.
UltraSane 9 hours ago [-]
Much harder to ban if they can run locally
brookst 4 hours ago [-]
Maybe? It seems like their strategy is to accept that safety is imperfect, err on the side of over-triggering, and iterate.
I don’t think it’s a black and white “if fable 5 over triggers on bio safety in 2026, that’s the final pattern we should expect to see from post-Mythos 20 in 2036”
inigyou 5 hours ago [-]
It's a good marketing strategy though, since nobody can disprove that Claude is the best chemist :)
NewsaHackO 11 hours ago [-]
I think one time I asked opus about copyfail when it just came out and it did treat me like some sort of criminal, but are there really people that run into this on a regular basis other than cybersecurity experts (which cannot be a big enough group to generate all of this criticism)?
poizan42 4 hours ago [-]
I have been trying to work on debugging tools using Opus 4.8. As it turns out working with low-level techniques that inspects and alters behavior of other processes is bordering close enough to cybersecurity research that it often hits the guardrails.
dmd 8 hours ago [-]
I asked it to clip a video onto segments based on location of spoken words (using separately done audio transcription) and it flagged that as cyber.
siva7 5 hours ago [-]
"Making Claude a chemist" is a punch in the face of all us here after we got a taste of Claude fable blocking almost any STEM-related topic. So i don't know what Story Anthropic wants to tell us with this blog. Probably more like "Hey, look at what awesome tricks Claude can do which of course you will never experience because you're not american, not friends with the CEO, not rich or simply because fuck you"
HarHarVeryFunny 42 minutes ago [-]
I think the story they want to tell is "we're not just taking your jobs, we can do positive stuff like Chemistry too, just like DeepMind!"
Except of course they mostly can't because Chemistry is about structure and molecular dynamics, not people's descriptions of experiments.
DeepMind if so far the only AI/AGI company - the rest are LLM companies.
UltraSane 9 hours ago [-]
Fable wouldn't even explain what an amino acid is.
chaostheory 5 hours ago [-]
It would make more sense to have specialized versions of Claude instead of having a universal one ie BioClaude, ProgrammerClaude, NuclearClaude, CyberSecurityClaude, et al
This would be both safer and less annoying to use.
OutOfHere 4 hours ago [-]
That seems bad because it kills interdisciplinary science.
gopalv 13 hours ago [-]
The non-professional side of Organic Chemistry is one place where I think AI would really shine.
Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
But the synthesis plan is only 10% of the actual work.
The gap between writing down the synthesis step and actually doing it is also extremely large.
Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
The Ritonavir episode of Veritasium is a great example of how all chemistry on paper is a mere shadow of what actually happens in real life.
ElFitz 11 hours ago [-]
> Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
I remember two years ago, when I actually got into using graph data structures, wondering if maybe the "space" of available reactions for any given starter and target molecules could be mapped as a graph, with intermediates as nodes and reactions as weighted directed edges, so synthesis becomes pathfinding through chemical space.
Turns out, it’s a thing! [^0]
Edit: Makes you wonder how much interesting stuff is sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right cross-domain awareness / knowledge / whatever to notice it.
There is a lot of graph theory in Chemistry - modelling chemicals as (vertex/edge coloured) graphs, reaction networks, etc.
Of course some molecules (eg aromatic systems, like ferrocene) are not naturally representable as graphs. I wonder if it is the same with synthesis - are there reactions hard to model as a graph (or petri net or whatever). One simple example I know is that you have to be careful with including a node for 'water' as it gets connected to everything else! Or at least in biochemistry it does.
Obscurity4340 4 hours ago [-]
Why is ferrocene ungraphable or in this context unable to be modelled in that way?
A metal atom sandwiched between two Cp rings. You _can_ model this as 5 single bonds between each atom of a ring (so 10 total C-M bonds), or you have to have some kind of 'edge' (bond) between the ring as a whole and the metal.
The more general issue is that a graph model of a chemical assumes a 'bond' is between exactly two atoms. Three-center hydrogen bonds are another example where this model fails to capture the chemistry very well.
Of course, it's a tradeoff - you can model _most_ compounds with just graphs (plus atom type, charge, chirality) and the relatively few that do not quite fit are special cases.
tylergetsay 6 hours ago [-]
Hamilton Morris and his stuff on clandestine chemistry is super interesting in this domain. Sometimes the chemistry is straight forward but access to certain chemicals is hard, so the procedure must change based on what's available not necessarily what's ideal
jgilias 13 hours ago [-]
> Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
Sounds a lot like vibe coding lol
fakedang 12 hours ago [-]
Modern biochemistry (so far) IS vibe coding lol. You mostly have vibes on how the chemistry should work, based on (very strong) natural evidence coupled with theoretical development and lab studies. Then you mix and match, goading bacteria and praying that they produce what you want in good measure. Then you take their secretions and run chromatography studies on them to check if that's what you actually want, or whether it's just some random bullshit. If it's the latter, you have to toss that out and start all over again.
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
Or in some instances that "random bullshit" turns out to be something actually novel and/or useful.
moffkalast 12 hours ago [-]
At least vibe coding can only explode in your face metaphorically.
b112 10 hours ago [-]
Until vibe code is used for weapons system, or explosive manufacturers, or.. or...
The world today is coding.
inigyou 5 hours ago [-]
Already is. Missile that hit the Iranian girl's school was vibe targeted.
reinitctxoffset 12 hours ago [-]
Organic chemistry seems like a discipline better done by chemists than forward deployed staff with their payoff function sharply truncated at an IPO which at this point may or may not happen on schedule.
xvilka 11 hours ago [-]
Combine it with automated lab like this[1][2][3][4][5] (and many others) and it will iterate much quicker. Some already do but at a smaller scale, AFAIK.
Fable pre-ban wouldn’t continue an old conversation about brain chemistry, sooo I guess they’re dusting off old tricks now that their new robot is offline.
matheusmoreira 13 hours ago [-]
What good is it if you can't use it? Or worse, if you can but it silently sabotages you?
yorwba 13 hours ago [-]
> We measured three Claude models (Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6)
You can use those and they probably won't intentionally sabotage you.
matheusmoreira 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah. Probably.
siva7 5 hours ago [-]
The thing about trust is.. it takes time to build and seconds to destroy.
sandermvanvliet 10 hours ago [-]
Waiting for Claude to end up on Derek Lowe’s list of things he won’t work with
smj-edison 12 hours ago [-]
I feel like chemistry is one thing that current models will struggle with for the next while, because it's inherently 3D. In the micro world, shape = function. Maybe enough textual patterns will let it under chemistry, but like how do you describe a hydrogen shift without showing how it moves positions and rebalances bonds?
FailMore 10 hours ago [-]
I think this is a very interesting concept/question. I feel like programming is more about shapes than anything else… but they seem to have mastered that fairly easily… but I totally get your point!
johncole 10 hours ago [-]
Agree here, chem may be more complex than language, and not as definable as language. I think this is the realm that physical ai will overlap with.
moonsu 7 hours ago [-]
I wonder if chemistry skills will be an emergent behaviour of world model research.
snovv_crash 7 hours ago [-]
I work a lot with the geometry side of computer vision (camera calibration, 3d reconstruction etc.) and LLMs have been really bad in this space. They throw stuff at the problem until a minor improvement is made by over fitting on a testset, then gaslight that this is the best thing possible. Then I go do something like working with raster-based data, or some JavaScript based visualization, and it goes super smoothly.
anentropic 11 hours ago [-]
I guess the future is one where every idiot has access to a genius servant, and all that implies
sudhirkhanger 9 hours ago [-]
Are there organizations or individuals using AI to solve world problems if they are so powerful as these companies are saying?
throw1234567891 5 hours ago [-]
everything from amd in robotics space
thefounder 13 hours ago [-]
Let’s ban this before it gets too powerful !
simulator5g 13 hours ago [-]
I don't think it should be outright banned, automated intelligence is like a gun, hammer, knife, nuclear warhead, etc.
thefounder 7 hours ago [-]
Ok I may agree with this. Instead to ban it we should nerf it to the point it’s useless.
naveen99 6 hours ago [-]
Maybe nerf should start selling ai models.
Obscurity4340 4 hours ago [-]
How are they not already??
pkal 13 hours ago [-]
I see that intelligence itself is a tool, but that doesn't mean I want an automated gun, automated hammer, automated nuclear warhead, etc.
fakedang 12 hours ago [-]
You may not want them, but the NRA certainly wants that you want them.
ben_w 12 hours ago [-]
In the future perhaps it will mean "Neural Rifle Automaton"
tearwear 13 hours ago [-]
not really, though. you don't see automated intelligence in the hands of junkies et al. ... and you don't see it coming, either ...
simulator5g 12 hours ago [-]
Junkies et al can log into chatgpt right now and use it to create a phishing email to steal drug money from your Grandma. Many people saw this coming.
orphea 8 hours ago [-]
And they don't need castrated Fable for that.
xaxfixho 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ed_mercer 11 hours ago [-]
I wonder if every future announcement will be met with this criticism. Like, what's the point if they'll ban it in a few days.
UltraSane 9 hours ago [-]
I don't really want the average LLM being able to tell anyone exactly how to syntheize lethal nerve agents.
bouncycastle 9 hours ago [-]
you can already get that information by reading books in the library.
The biggest barrier is not information, it's the ability to secure enough of the materials and equipment.
For example, information for how to make a nuclear weapon is already there in the library. However, mining enough yellow cake and then purifying it is an industrial scale operation, out of reach unless you are a nation state, and have good mountain tunnels, etc. To a lesser extent, this is also true for producing chemical weapons. The theory is there, but actual production extremely out of reach. No LLM can help you there. (You can verify by reading up on Aum Shinrikyo to get an idea of the staggering scale required)
dmd 8 hours ago [-]
Sure, information on all sorts of things is in “the library”. But (a) most people in the world don’t have access to a decent library (if you’re on HN you’re statistically much more likely to), (b) most people have no idea how to use one (same), and most importantly (c) AI will distill the knowledge from ten books you might need to read into step by step simple instructions if you ask.
defrost 9 hours ago [-]
> mining enough yellow cake and then purifying it is an industrial scale operation, out of reach unless you are a nation state
or a transnational (or even national scale) energy and or minerals company.
Might be hard to slip past the shareholders, but dark projects have flown under the annual reports of several large players.
bouncycastle 6 hours ago [-]
Highly unlikely. Just the energy cost of running centrifuges, let alone manufacturing them is impossible to hide. It's staggering when you consider it.
To put some more perspective, an LLM could show you how to make a Boeing 747 in detail, but the actual chance of someone making one with no tools and logistics would be 0.
LLMs haven't changed the economic realities.
8 hours ago [-]
jgilias 13 hours ago [-]
inb4 someone calls Bessent to explain how this can be used in fentanyl production.
exitnode 10 hours ago [-]
I vote for "Claude Pinkman" as a name
LUmBULtERA 6 hours ago [-]
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
andrewstuart 9 hours ago [-]
“I can’t tell you that, you might hurt yourself.”
4 hours ago [-]
hansmayer 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 19:13:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Step 1. Make it so Claude can do anything — the whole point of AGI
Step 2. Wait, if the user can do Anything, that would be Very Bad!
Step 3. Err on the safe side with blanket bans of entire fields
The latter actually seems to me a sensible reaction to e.g. the compartmentalization used in the large scale cyber attack using Claude last year. Where they were able to do Bad Thing by dividing it into many, many Small, Seemingly Harmless Things.
Gated access sounds bad (and I agree it sounds bad!) but it might actually be the only sensible response to such a set of conditions. I'm not sure though.
--
I saw some studies recently which showed LLMs provide much more detailed information to expert users. So we can distinguish between competence and incompetence based on use of language, and that is a reasonable metric for harm reduction.
But I don't think we can reliably detect "user has harmful intentions", at least not at a sufficient level of sophistication of the attacker.
They are following closely and the best offer 80-90% of the performance and come with a very small fraction of the costs.
Deepseek.v4.Pro.RePacked.LLMBoyz.part1.zstd
I don’t think it’s a black and white “if fable 5 over triggers on bio safety in 2026, that’s the final pattern we should expect to see from post-Mythos 20 in 2036”
Except of course they mostly can't because Chemistry is about structure and molecular dynamics, not people's descriptions of experiments.
DeepMind if so far the only AI/AGI company - the rest are LLM companies.
This would be both safer and less annoying to use.
Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
But the synthesis plan is only 10% of the actual work.
The gap between writing down the synthesis step and actually doing it is also extremely large.
Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
The Ritonavir episode of Veritasium is a great example of how all chemistry on paper is a mere shadow of what actually happens in real life.
I remember two years ago, when I actually got into using graph data structures, wondering if maybe the "space" of available reactions for any given starter and target molecules could be mapped as a graph, with intermediates as nodes and reactions as weighted directed edges, so synthesis becomes pathfinding through chemical space.
Turns out, it’s a thing! [^0]
Edit: Makes you wonder how much interesting stuff is sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right cross-domain awareness / knowledge / whatever to notice it.
[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9574932/
Of course some molecules (eg aromatic systems, like ferrocene) are not naturally representable as graphs. I wonder if it is the same with synthesis - are there reactions hard to model as a graph (or petri net or whatever). One simple example I know is that you have to be careful with including a node for 'water' as it gets connected to everything else! Or at least in biochemistry it does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallocene
A metal atom sandwiched between two Cp rings. You _can_ model this as 5 single bonds between each atom of a ring (so 10 total C-M bonds), or you have to have some kind of 'edge' (bond) between the ring as a whole and the metal.
The more general issue is that a graph model of a chemical assumes a 'bond' is between exactly two atoms. Three-center hydrogen bonds are another example where this model fails to capture the chemistry very well.
Of course, it's a tradeoff - you can model _most_ compounds with just graphs (plus atom type, charge, chirality) and the relatively few that do not quite fit are special cases.
Sounds a lot like vibe coding lol
The world today is coding.
[1] https://www.ginkgo.bio/autonomous-lab
[2] https://www.emeraldcloudlab.com/
[3] https://www.kebotix.com/
[4] https://www.chemify.io/
[5] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01485
You can use those and they probably won't intentionally sabotage you.
The biggest barrier is not information, it's the ability to secure enough of the materials and equipment.
For example, information for how to make a nuclear weapon is already there in the library. However, mining enough yellow cake and then purifying it is an industrial scale operation, out of reach unless you are a nation state, and have good mountain tunnels, etc. To a lesser extent, this is also true for producing chemical weapons. The theory is there, but actual production extremely out of reach. No LLM can help you there. (You can verify by reading up on Aum Shinrikyo to get an idea of the staggering scale required)
or a transnational (or even national scale) energy and or minerals company.
Might be hard to slip past the shareholders, but dark projects have flown under the annual reports of several large players.
To put some more perspective, an LLM could show you how to make a Boeing 747 in detail, but the actual chance of someone making one with no tools and logistics would be 0.
LLMs haven't changed the economic realities.