Anthropic CEO Faces Internal Opposition: Multiple Employees Had Pushed for Open Weight

According to the DeMagnete Monitor, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded to the open-source controversy, stating that the company does not support the full blocking of open weight models. He acknowledged that such models can reduce costs, promote competition, and facilitate enterprise deployment.

However, Anthropic remains cautious about strong models. Amodei believes that once model weights are made public, they cannot be retracted, and security restrictions can also be removed. He advocates for restrictions on advanced chip flows to China, combating industrial distillation, and requiring high-capacity models to undergo mandatory security testing before release.

Following the statement release, Shaun, an Anthropic post-training research fellow, publicly expressed his disagreement, thanking other employees who have worked with him to promote open weights.

Shaun did not itemize the disagreements. From his statement, it appears that he is not opposed to the phrase "not a complete ban," but rather to the company still restricting the open-sourcing of cutting-edge models. Anthropic has not yet signed the open letter supporting open-sourcing and has never committed to releasing the Claude weights openly.