A look at the ethical implications of AI

Fresh Air

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4.3 • 36.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

The AI chatbot Claude can help you write an email, challenge a hospital bill, or publish a novel. It was also reportedly used by the U.S. military in the operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Now the Pentagon is threatening to cut ties with Anthropic, the company that built it, because it insists on keeping restrictions around autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Journalist Gideon Lewis-Kraus spent months inside Anthropic, one of the world's most secretive AI companies, for a new piece in ‘The New Yorker,’ where he asks: What happens when the people who built the machine can't fully explain what it's doing? He spoke with Tonya Mosley.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. This week, the Pentagon is considering cutting business ties with the
0:06.3	artificial intelligence company Anthropic after the company declined to allow its chatbot,
0:12.1	Claude, to be used for certain military applications, including weapons development.
0:18.0	At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports that Clawed was used in a U.S.
0:22.6	operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro, claims Anthropic has not
0:28.1	confirmed and has declined to discuss publicly. Meanwhile, outside military and intelligence circles,
0:34.5	the same tool is being used for far less dramatic but still consequential
0:39.4	purposes. A man in New York reportedly used Claude to challenge a nearly $200,000 hospital bill
0:46.1	and negotiated most of it away. A romance novelist in South Africa has said she used it to help
0:52.8	publish more than 200 novels in a single year.
0:56.6	So what exactly is this system capable of? And how well do the people building it understand
1:02.4	what they've created? My guest today, journalist Gideon Lewis Krause spent months inside
1:08.4	Anthropic trying to answer that question. The company is one of the
1:12.4	most powerful AI firms in the world valued at about $350 billion, and also one of the most secretive.
1:20.5	It was founded by former Open AI employees, the team behind ChatGPT, who left because they
1:27.1	believe the race to build advanced artificial intelligence
1:29.7	was moving too fast and could become dangerous.
1:34.1	Gideon Lewis Krause is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
1:37.1	His piece is called What is Claude? Anthropic doesn't know either.
1:41.9	Our interview was recorded yesterday.
1:45.9	And Gideon, welcome to fresh air.
2:02.2	Thank you so much for having you, Tanya. Let's get started by talking about the latest news. We learned last week that the military may have used Anthropics tool clawed during the operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro.
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