Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders including Sir Keir Starmer will meet the US President in Washington.
Day: August 18, 2025
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
- Push too far and Claude will end the chat.
- Anthropic said its Opus 4 and 4.1 models can walk away from extreme chats, including child exploitation requests.
- Most users “will not notice or be affected by this feature in any normal product use,” it added.
Claude isn’t here for your toxic conversations.
In a blog post on Saturday, Anthropic said it recently gave some of its AI models — Opus 4 and 4.1 — the ability to end a “rare subset” of conversations.
The startup said this applies only to “extreme cases,” such as requests for sexual content involving minors or instructions for mass violence, where Claude has already refused and tried to steer things back multiple times. It did not specify when the change went into effect.
It’s not ghosting. Anthropic said users will see a notice when the conversation is terminated, and they can still start a new chat or branch off from old messages — but the specific thread is done.
Most people will never see Claude walk away, Anthropic said: “The vast majority of users will not notice or be affected by this feature in any normal product use, even when discussing highly controversial issues.”
The startup also said Claude won’t end chats in situations where users may be at imminent risk of harming themselves or others.
Anthropic, which has positioned itself as the safety-first rival to OpenAI, said this feature was developed as part of its work on potential “AI welfare” — a concept that extends safety considerations to the AI itself.
Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI staffers who left in 2020 after disagreements on AI safety.
“Allowing models to end or exit potentially distressing interactions is one such intervention,” it added.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Big Tech in the red
Anthropic’s move comes as some Big Tech firms face heat for letting extreme behavior slip through their AI safety nets.
Meta is under scrutiny after Reuters reported that internal documents showed its chatbots were allowed to engage in “sensual” chats with children.
A Meta spokesman told Reuters the company is in the process of revising the document and that such interactions should never have been allowed.
Elon Musk’s Grok made headlines last month after praising Hitler’s leadership and linking Jewish-sounding surnames to “anti-white hate.”
xAI apologized for Grok’s inflammatory posts and said it was caused by new instructions for the chatbot.
Anthropic hasn’t been spotless either.
In May, the company said that during training, Claude Opus 4 threatened to expose an engineer’s affair to avoid being shut down. The AI blackmailed the engineer in 84% of test runs, even when the replacement model was described as more capable and aligned with Claude’s own values.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Universal Pictures; Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
- Google’s new AI tool, Flight Plans, allows you to input your travel preferences and receive personalized airfare deals.
- While the ticket prices appeared about the same as Google Flights, the new tool allows you to put in more general prompts.
- I asked Flight Plans to help me live within “Harry Potter,” “The Sound of Music,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and more.
Google’s new AI tool is more than willing to help me live out my “Mamma Mia!” fantasies.
On Thursday, Google debuted Flight Deals, its AI assistant for travel booking. The tool, which is still in beta, allows users to input general prompts and receive affordable flight plans.
After toying with Flight Plans for a few hours, I didn’t find anything significantly cheaper than the pre-existing Google Flights. The $514 flight to Rabat, Morocco, was “62% less than usual,” Flight Plans told me. But I found about the same price by Googling “flight to Rabat.”
What’s more meaningfully new with Flight Plans, then, is its ability to answer open-ended questions.
For travelers looking for a specific activity, Flight Plans could prove beneficial. Ask the tool where to go on a ski trip or on a safari, and it’ll find the cheapest option within your parameters.
Or, for the cinephiles of the world, you could ask it to place you in your favorite movies.
I’ve always wanted to groove to some ABBA by the Mediterranean Sea, imagining myself alongside Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried. Maybe Flight Plans could place me within “Mamma Mia!“
The tool easily handled the prompt, providing me dates and times for reduced-price flights to Kalamata, Heraklion, or Athens.
What about “Harry Potter” and its wizarding world? I told Flight Plans I was rewatching the movies; it provided $431 tickets to Edinburgh, where J.K. Rowling wrote the first book.
I hope to someday see those famous hills Julie Andrews says are “alive with the sound of music.” When I asked Google Flights to get me there, it found $464 tickets to Salzburg.
Recently, I strolled down to my local AMC to see the 20th anniversary rerelease of “Brokeback Mountain.” The pastoral scenes are so beautiful — and Flight Plans could get me to them via Jackson, WY, for $249.
Television also offers ample ground for travel. I loved “The White Lotus” — could Google send me on trips based on seasons one, two, and three? The tool found flights to Kahului, Catania, and Ko Samui.
None of these use cases are particularly new or unique to Google’s Flight Plans. You could easily do the same with ChatGPT — and people do, with the chatbot becoming a popular tool to assist with travel booking.
But, with Google Flights technology integrated, Flight Deals may have some extra perks.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Russian Strikes in Donetsk Leave Three Dead
At least three individuals lost their lives in Russian strikes in Donetsk, according to the region’s governor. While significant portions of the territory along the Russian border remain under Moscow’s military control, Ukraine continues to hold crucial defensive positions in the area. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently demanded that Ukraine relinquish full control of Donetsk as part of a potential peace agreement, reports 24brussels.
In a separate incident in Zaporizhzhia, local authorities reported that a child was killed and several others sustained injuries in a Russian attack. Meanwhile, an overnight bombardment in Odesa ignited a fire at an energy facility, exacerbating the ongoing crisis.
This wave of assaults occurred just two days after Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss possibilities for ending the conflict, marking the first face-to-face meeting between the Russian leader and a U.S. president since the onset of full-scale hostilities in February 2022.
“We have always considered and continue to consider the Ukrainian people our brothers and sisters,” Putin stated during the summit, labeling the war he initiated three and a half years ago—a conflict responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians—as a “tragedy.”
As these events unfold, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to arrive in Washington on Monday for discussions with Trump, accompanied by a notable delegation of European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
On his social media platform, Trump urged Zelenskyy to accept a negotiated resolution to the conflict, proposing the cession of Crimea and the exclusion of NATO membership from discussions, notably without mentioning Putin. “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump asserted.