Why Anthropic's AI Claude tried to contact the FBI in a test

At the offices of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, in the New York, London or San Francisco locations, you may notice a vending machine in the kitchens, filled with snacks, drinks, T-shirts, obscure books and even tungsten cubes.

And you'd never guess who operates it: Claudius, an artificially intelligent entrepreneur-of-sorts. 

Developed in association with the outside AI safety firm Andon Labs, Claudius is an experiment in autonomy and the ability of AI to operate independently over the course of hours, days and weeks. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been outspoken about both the potential benefits and the dangers of AI, especially as models become more autonomous or capable of acting on their own.

"The more autonomy we give these systems… the more we can worry," he told correspondent Anderson Cooper in an interview. "Are they doing the things that we want them to do?" 

To answer this question, Amodei relies on Logan Graham, who is head of what Anthropic calls its Frontier Red Team. 

The Red Team stress tests each new version of Anthropic's AI models, called Claude, to see what kind of damage the AI might help humans do.

And as AI becomes more powerful, Anthropic's Red Team is also engaged in experiments to better understand the technology's ability to act autonomously and explore what unexpected behaviors might arise as a result.

"How much does autonomy concern you?" Cooper asked Red Team leader Graham in an interview.

"You want a model to go build your business and make you a $1 billion. But you don't want to wake up one day and find that it's also locked you out of the company," he said.