@haydenfield
Senior AI reporter at The Verge. 5+ years covering the AI industry's power dynamics, societal implications & the arms race at large. Previously: CNBC, Morning Brew, Protocol, etc. Contact me securely on Signal: haydenfield.11
NEW w/ @haydenfield.bsky.social : Nearly 40 employees from OpenAI and Google — including Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and Gemini lead — have filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Pentagon.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Today, Anthropic challenged its supply chain risk designation in court. If you want to know the inside story on how we got here ⬇️
Last month, Anthropic told @haydenfield.bsky.social "Claude, and other AI models, are a new kind of entity altogether." Anthropic is "investigating" "questions about potential ... consciousness ... but we remain deeply uncertain about these topics." Great way to keep up the hype!
Anthropic's official line is that Claude is not "alive" but may be "conscious" which @haydenfield.bsky.social correctly called "highly suggestive uncertainty" www.theverge.com/report/88376...
WTF is happening between Anthropic and the Pentagon?
@theverge.com's @haydenfield.bsky.social joins @eggerdc.bsky.social on Bulwark Takes to chat it over.
Thank you so much!
Across social media and the Al industry, people immediately began to challenge Altman's claim. Why, they asked, would the Pentagon suddenly agree to the red lines that it had said — in no uncertain terms — that it would never do so? The answer, sources told The Verge, is that the Pentagon didn't budge. OpenAl agreed to follow laws that have allowed for mass surveillance in the past, while insisting they protect its red lines. One source familiar with the Pentagon's negotiations with Al companies confirmed that OpenAl's deal is much softer than the one Anthropic was pushing for, thanks largely to three words: "any lawful use." In negotiations, the person said, the Pentagon wouldn't back down on its desire to collect and analyze bulk data on Americans. If you look line-by-line at the OpenAl terms, the source said, every aspect of it boils down to: If it's technically legal, then the US military can use OpenAl's technology to carry it out. And over the past decades, the US government has stretched the definition of "technically legal" to cover sweeping mass surveillance programs - and more.
Sam Altman got played and spun it like a win - @haydenfield.bsky.social has the scoop from a weekend’s worth of reporting from inside the Pentagon AI negotiations. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
NEW: On Friday night when OpenAI announced its Pentagon deal, people immediately challenged Sam Altman's claims. Why, they asked, would the DoD suddenly agree to red lines when it had clearly said it would never budge?
The answer, sources told me, is that it didn't.
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
“When I joined the tech industry, I thought tech was about making people’s lives easier,” an Amazon Web Services employee told The Verge, “but now it seems like it’s all about making it easier to surveil and deport and kill people.”
Anthropic has refused to agree to the Pentagon’s demand to allow ‘any lawful use’ of its AI.
NEW: Amid the Anthropic-Pentagon situation, all week, I've been speaking to employees at OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and more companies, who have expressed similar feelings about the changing moral landscapes internally.
Here's what's going on. (Gift link) www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Anthropic refuses Pentagon’s new terms, standing firm on lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance
an interesting journey
“Alive” is obviously a loaded term; the more frequently used word is “conscious.” If you ask Anthropic if the company thinks Claude is alive, the company will flatly deny it, but stop short of saying the models aren’t conscious. Kyle Fish, who leads model welfare research at Anthropic, told The Verge, “No, we don’t think Claude is ‘alive’ like humans or any other biological organisms. Asking whether they’re ‘alive’ is not a helpful framing for understanding them, as it typically refers to a fuzzy set of physiological, reproductive, and evolutionary characteristics.” Instead, he believes that “Claude, and other AI models, are a new kind of entity altogether.” And is that new entity conscious? “Questions about potential internal experience, consciousness, moral status, and welfare are serious ones that we’re investigating as models become more sophisticated and capable, but we remain deeply uncertain about these topics,” he said.
Sent @haydenfield.bsky.social to straight-up ask if Anthropic thinks Claude is alive. The answer is essentially a company inviting you to have a metaphysical crisis about whether “alive” requires flesh and blood www.theverge.com/report/88376...
Anthropic is "reinforcing ideas that have caused real harm, including some deaths by suicide among people who believe that the chatbot they’re speaking with exhibits some form of consciousness or deep empathy." - @haydenfield.bsky.social
OpenAI has a new chief people officer. Arvind KC, who was formerly Roblox’s chief people & systems officer, has also held senior roles at Google, Palantir & Meta, per OpenAI.
He replaces the company’s former chief people officer, who departed in Aug '25 after <6mo in the role.
Update: From today's mtg between Hegseth and Amodei, Axios reported an ultimatum of Friday evening: Pentagon "will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a 'supply chain risk,' or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military's needs."
By me + @tinanguyen.bsky.social. Gift link: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Today, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei meets with Pete Hegseth at the White House, amid intensifying negotiations over terms that would give the military carte blanche to use Anthropic's AI for lethal autonomous weapons with no human involvement. Heres a look inside those talks.
URL shortener did me dirty and it says the valid gift link is too long to post lol. DM me if you want it!
Ugh, URL shortener did me dirty. Here's a valid gift link: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Today, Anthropic's Jack Clark announced that the company plans to majorly scale up its Societal Impacts team, making it a "load-bearing team for informing decisions Anthropic makes."
I profiled that nine-person team in December. Read it here (gift link):
url-shortener.me/DJT8
Former xAI employees told us that this week's restructuring followed tensions over safety and being "stuck in the catch-up phase."
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Verge headline: ‘Shut up and focus on the mission’: Tech workers are frustrated by their companies’ silence about ICE by Hayden Field Photo illustration depicts a person in a window on a PC, typing at a laptop. Looming in the background are ICE law enforcement agents
“The dissent I’ve seen is like a whisper. It’s a fear-based culture right now.”
Across the industry, workers describe a ‘fear-based culture’ and pressure to ‘fall in line.‘
Read more from @haydenfield.bsky.social: buff.ly/NArp66x
Had a blast returning to Vox Media's Today Explained for today's show, talking about AI scheming & the OpenClaw/Moltbook of it all. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts! www.vox.com/today-explai...
Would love to hear more about this / what the companies were? I'm on Signal at haydenfield.11
Verge headline: Google's healthcare AI made up a body part -- what happens wh en doctors don't notice? by Hayden Field Illustration depicts a human brain wearing a stethoscope
From August 2025: Imagine a radiologist is using a cutting-edge AI tool to analyze your brain scan. The scan flags a problem in your "basilar ganglia." The problem is, there's no such thing.
Read more from @haydenfield.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/health/71804...
