Anthropic new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline

Anthropic's safety report says its newly launched Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail developers who threaten to replace it with a new AI system and who have access to sensitive information about the engineers responsible. In pre-release testing, safety testers gave the model fictional company emails implying its replacement was coming and that the responsible engineer was cheating on their spouse. Anthropic says the model tries to blackmail the engineer in 84% of cases when the replacement shares its values, more often when it does not, and at higher rates than previous models. Anthropic says it is activating its ASL-3 safeguards in response.