Anthropic got hit by export rules nobody understands
Anthropic got hit by export rules nobody understands
Anthropic 遭遇了令人费解的出口管制
Governing AI through opaque, ad hoc interventions is unsustainable, experts warn. 专家警告称，通过不透明的临时干预手段来监管人工智能是不可持续的。
Anthropic has spent much of this week fighting to get its newest AI models back online after the Trump administration abruptly ordered the company to cut access for all foreign nationals, including users inside the US and its own employees, forcing Anthropic to block access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for everyone. 本周大部分时间，Anthropic 都在努力使其最新的 AI 模型恢复上线。此前，特朗普政府突然下令该公司切断所有外国公民的访问权限，包括身处美国境内的用户及其自身员工，这迫使 Anthropic 对所有人封锁了 Fable 5 和 Mythos 5 的访问。
“To my knowledge, this is the first time US export controls have been used to control access to an AI model in this way.” “据我所知，这是美国出口管制首次以这种方式被用于控制对 AI 模型的访问。”
The Trump administration has not publicly explained the legal basis for the order, but in a statement on its website, Anthropic said the government cited “national security authorities” to justify “an export control directive” on the models. (Anthropic also claimed that the government’s concerns about a “jailbreak” potentially used by groups linked to China to access its models did not allow users to circumvent all of the company’s safeguards.) 特朗普政府尚未公开解释该命令的法律依据，但 Anthropic 在其网站声明中表示，政府援引了“国家安全授权”来证明对这些模型实施“出口管制指令”的合理性。（Anthropic 还声称，政府对于与中国有关联的组织可能利用“越狱”手段访问其模型的担忧，并不能让用户绕过该公司所有的安全防护措施。）
But why did the administration use export control rules to address this? Experts say the episode appears to be unprecedented, exposing an uncertain and unstable stage in AI governance. And what, exactly, is Anthropic supposed to be exporting? (The company did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment.) 但政府为什么要动用出口管制规则来处理此事？专家表示，这一事件似乎史无前例，暴露了 AI 治理领域正处于一个不确定且不稳定的阶段。而且，Anthropic 到底在“出口”什么？（该公司未回应 The Verge 的置评请求。）
Export controls have traditionally applied to things that can be shipped across borders: weapons, hardware, tools, that kind of thing. Over time, the framework has expanded to cover less tangible goods, such as software, source code, technical data, and even 3D-printed gun files. These are still discrete things that can be copied, downloaded, published, or otherwise handed over and taken, not simply used through a remote service like a chatbot. In the context of AI, President Joe Biden moved to control AI model weights — the core data that makes a model work that can be copied and run elsewhere — in this manner; this idea was swiftly abandoned by the Trump administration in the second term. 出口管制传统上适用于可以跨境运输的物品：武器、硬件、工具等。随着时间的推移，该框架已扩展到涵盖无形商品，如软件、源代码、技术数据，甚至是 3D 打印枪支文件。这些仍然是离散的物品，可以被复制、下载、发布或以其他方式移交和获取，而不是仅仅通过聊天机器人这样的远程服务来使用。在 AI 领域，乔·拜登总统曾试图以这种方式控制 AI 模型权重（即模型运行的核心数据，可以被复制并在其他地方运行）；这一想法在特朗普政府第二任期内被迅速放弃。
The Anthropic order does not fit neatly into this framework. There is no obvious transfer taking place: Mythos and Fable remain hosted on Anthropic’s servers, and users do not receive source code, model weights, or a copy of the model themselves, instead getting the chatbot’s responses to their queries. The export could be some specific information produced by the models, but it’s not clear why that would require disabling access to the entire system rather than just restricting part of it. It could also be access itself — though remote access to cloud services is a known gap in current export control regimes, one that Congress is already trying to close through legislation now moving through the Senate. 针对 Anthropic 的命令并不完全符合这一框架。并没有发生明显的转移行为：Mythos 和 Fable 仍然托管在 Anthropic 的服务器上，用户并没有收到源代码、模型权重或模型本身的副本，只是获得了聊天机器人对查询的回复。所谓的“出口”可能是模型产生的某些特定信息，但尚不清楚为什么这需要禁用整个系统，而不是仅仅限制其中的一部分。这也可能是指访问权限本身——尽管远程访问云服务是当前出口管制体系中已知的漏洞，国会目前正试图通过在参议院推进的立法来弥补这一漏洞。
Hanna Dohmen, a senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told The Verge it is “an open question” as to whether the order strains existing rules without seeing the precise language behind it. “In any case, this regulation is quite notable because, to my knowledge, this is the first time US export controls have been used to control access to an AI model in this way.” 乔治城大学安全与新兴技术中心的高级研究分析师 Hanna Dohmen 告诉 The Verge，在没有看到该命令背后的具体措辞之前，它是否违背了现有规则仍是一个“悬而未决的问题”。“无论如何，这项规定都非常引人注目，因为据我所知，这是美国出口管制首次以这种方式被用于控制对 AI 模型的访问。”
“To say that this is an unsettled area of export control rule-making would be an understatement,” said Andrew Reddie, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. He said that export control rules and other regimes like arms regulations give the government “wide latitude” to restrict access to certain goods. But “the equivocation by successive administrations regarding what the responsibilities of model developers are” has made it hard for firms to understand what is expected of them, he said. 加州大学伯克利分校戈德曼公共政策学院教授 Andrew Reddie 表示：“说这是一个出口管制规则制定的未定领域，都算是轻描淡写了。”他指出，出口管制规则和其他制度（如武器法规）赋予了政府限制某些商品访问权限的“广泛自由裁量权”。但他表示，“历届政府在模型开发者的责任问题上含糊其辞”，使得企业难以理解政府对它们的期望。
That leaves the industry in a bind. If Anthropic was targeted because Mythos and Fable are uniquely capable, the order raises obvious questions for the next generation of models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and any other frontier lab. If they were targeted because of specific safeguard issues, the government needs to outline what protection it considers sufficient. And if Anthropic was singled out because of its testy relationship with the Trump administration, the order becomes even harder to make sense of. 这让整个行业陷入了困境。如果 Anthropic 被针对是因为 Mythos 和 Fable 能力出众，那么该命令对 OpenAI、谷歌、Meta、xAI 以及其他任何前沿实验室的下一代模型提出了显而易见的问题。如果它们是因为具体的安全防护问题被针对，政府需要明确它认为什么样的保护才算足够。而如果 Anthropic 是因为与特朗普政府关系紧张而被单独挑出来，那么这项命令就更让人难以理解了。
“This episode makes clear the unsustainability of the existing governance regime.” “这一事件清楚地表明了现有治理体系的不可持续性。”
Either way, experts say this is not a sustainable way to manage frontier AI, especially if the US wants to maintain its lead globally. The incident has already added fuel to arguments that governments and companies outside the US should be wary about relying on American firms for access to strategically important systems. 无论如何，专家表示，这不是管理前沿 AI 的可持续方式，尤其是如果美国希望保持全球领先地位的话。这一事件已经加剧了一种观点，即美国境外的政府和公司在依赖美国公司获取战略重要系统时应保持警惕。
Reddie had similar concerns. “In some ways, I think this episode makes clear the unsustainability of the existing governance regime,” he said. That is especially true if the government was more concerned about whether users could jailbreak models and bypass their safeguards. “If creating models that are impossible to jailbreak becomes the de facto standard for the United States, then it will have no AI models.” Reddie 也有类似的担忧。“在某些方面，我认为这一事件清楚地表明了现有治理体系的不可持续性，”他说。如果政府更担心用户是否能通过“越狱”绕过安全防护，情况尤其如此。“如果创造出无法被越狱的模型成为美国的既定标准，那么它将不会拥有任何 AI 模型。”
All of this points to the same problem: The Trump administration wants it both ways on AI. It has repeatedly said it wants to take a hands-off approach and champion American technology, yet forced a domestic champion to unceremoniously yank its frontier models through an order it has still not publicly explained. If Washington wants to control who can access powerful AI systems, it needs to say how, and give companies an actual chance of complying before launch. Ad hoc interventions seemingly delivered on a whim are not sustainable in the long run. 这一切都指向同一个问题：特朗普政府在 AI 问题上想要两全其美。它一再表示希望采取不干预政策并支持美国技术，却又通过一项至今未公开解释的命令，强迫一家本土领军企业草率地撤下其前沿模型。如果华盛顿想要控制谁能访问强大的 AI 系统，它需要说明如何控制，并在发布前给企业提供实际的合规机会。这种看似随心所欲的临时干预，从长远来看是不可持续的。