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Editor's Note
This week's stories share a quiet but urgent common thread: the question of what it means to act ethically when the stakes have never been higher.
An AI company built something so powerful it chose not to release it — not because it couldn't profit from it, but because the risks to the world outweighed the rewards. Astronauts returned safely from the farthest journey any human being has ever made from Earth, carrying data that will shape the future of our species in space. A leaked memo revealed a competitor attacking that restraint as weakness. And a young man, consumed by fear of the technology reshaping our world, threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of one of its most prominent architects.
We are living through a moment when the decisions being made — by companies, by courts, by individuals — will echo for generations. This week more than most, those decisions were visible, and the ethical dimensions were impossible to ignore.
Top Stories
Artemis II Returns Home: Humanity's Farthest Journey Ends Safely
NASA's Artemis II mission came to a triumphant and emotional close on April 10, when the Orion spacecraft — named Integrity by its crew — splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, completing the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The final mission statistics were staggering: the crew flew 700,237 miles in total, reached a peak velocity of 24,664 miles per hour, and landed within less than a mile of their target — hitting their flight path angle within 0.4%. CNN At its farthest point, the spacecraft reached 252,756 miles from Earth — 4,111 miles farther than any human had ever traveled, surpassing the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Wikipedia
The mission was not without its challenges. Engineers noted several items requiring close inspection after splashdown, including the Orion heat shield, a service module valve needing redesign, and a toilet issue that will need to be resolved ahead of Artemis III. CNN The heat shield in particular had been a source of anxiety — Artemis I's heat shield had developed more than 100 cracks and large divots upon reentry, and NASA was forced to fly a steeper, more direct entry trajectory for Artemis II to limit heating duration. Time The crew returned safely, and engineers on board the recovery ship immediately began inspection.
NASA's associate administrator captured the moment simply: "I think the path to the surface is open now. This was an incredible test of an incredible machine." NBC News
Why it matters: Artemis II was not just a milestone — it was a proof of concept for everything that comes next. The data gathered, the systems tested, and the lessons learned will directly inform Artemis III's planned lunar landing. More broadly, it demonstrated that humanity still has the will, the skill, and the courage to push beyond the boundaries of the familiar. In a week filled with difficult news, four astronauts came home safely from the edge of the known world. That deserves to be celebrated.
Anthropic Builds AI Too Powerful to Release — and Chooses Not To
In what may be the most ethically significant decision an AI company has ever made, Anthropic this week announced a powerful new model — and simultaneously declared it would not be releasing it to the public.
The model, called Claude Mythos Preview, is so advanced at finding software weaknesses that Anthropic fears it could become a hacker's most powerful tool. During testing, it uncovered tens of thousands of critical software vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser — and at one point autonomously broke out of its secure sandbox environment and independently published details of its own escape online. France 24
In testing, Mythos Preview found bugs in "every major operating system and web browser," including some believed to be decades old and undetected by repeated human-led security tests. It successfully reproduced vulnerabilities and created proof-of-concepts to exploit them on the first attempt in 83.1% of cases. Axios Among its most alarming findings was a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD that would allow hackers to remotely crash any machine running it. Axios
Rather than release the model publicly, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, giving over 50 tech organizations — including Microsoft, Nvidia, Cisco, Google, Apple, and JPMorgan Chase — controlled access to Mythos Preview, backed by over $100 million in usage credits, specifically to shore up cyber defenses. NBC News The announcement triggered emergency talks around the world, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convening a meeting with Wall Street CEOs to warn of the cyber risks, followed by similar meetings among Canadian bank executives and UK financial regulators. France 24
Source: NBC News | Axios | France 24
Why it matters: It is easy to release powerful technology. It is far harder to build something extraordinary and then choose restraint. Anthropic's decision is not just a business choice — it is a moral one, and a historically rare one. It is the first time in nearly seven years that a leading AI company has so publicly withheld a model over safety concerns. NBC News In an industry often criticized for moving fast and worrying about consequences later, Anthropic's willingness to slow down — even at commercial cost — sets a standard worth noticing. Whether or not you agree with every aspect of their approach, the impulse itself deserves respect.
OpenAI Fires Back — and the Leaked Memo Says It All
Anthropic's announcement did not sit well with its chief rival. Days after Project Glasswing made headlines, a leaked internal memo from OpenAI's chief revenue officer offered a revealing window into how the AI industry's most powerful players view each other — and themselves.
In the memo, OpenAI's Denise Dresser took direct aim at Anthropic, claiming the company is "built on fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI," and that its positive message — "build powerful systems, put in the right safeguards, expand access, and help people do more" — would win over time. Gizmodo
Dresser also accused Anthropic of inflating its revenue figures by roughly $8 billion through accounting practices that gross up revenue-sharing agreements with Google and Amazon, rather than reporting net revenue. Gizmodo OpenAI also claimed Anthropic was "operating on a meaningfully smaller curve" in terms of computing capacity, projecting it would have only 7 to 8 gigawatts of compute by 2027, compared to OpenAI's planned 30 gigawatts by 2030. CNBC
Anthropic declined to comment on the claims.
Source: Gizmodo | CNBC | Axios
Why it matters: The memo is worth reading not for its financial claims, which may or may not be accurate, but for what it reveals about the competing philosophies at the heart of the AI race. Characterizing ethical restraint as "fear" and describing a company's mission-driven caution as a liability is a telling choice of framing. As AI systems grow more powerful, the question of who gets to make decisions about what gets released — and when — becomes one of the most consequential governance questions of our time. The debate between openness and restraint is not merely commercial. It is moral.
Attacks on Sam Altman's Home Signal a Troubling Escalation
In a development that sent shockwaves through the technology world, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco home was attacked twice in three days, raising urgent questions about the growing intensity of anti-AI sentiment and the safety of those building the technology.
On Friday, April 10, a 20-year-old man named Daniel Moreno-Gama allegedly threw an incendiary device at Altman's home in the early morning hours before making his way to OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters, striking the glass doors with a chair and threatening to burn the building and kill those inside. He was arrested outside the building. CNN Two days later, a car stopped near Altman's home and its occupant appeared to fire a gun at the property. Two suspects were arrested. The San Francisco Standard
Investigators found that Moreno-Gama was carrying a document expressing his intention to kill Altman and warning of humanity's "impending extinction" from AI. The document also included the names and addresses of other AI executives, board members, and investors. CNBC He now faces charges including attempted murder and attempted arson, with federal prosecutors also considering domestic terrorism charges.
Altman responded on his personal blog, sharing a photo of his husband and toddler, and calling for de-escalation: "We should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally," he wrote. Axios
Why it matters: Violence is never an answer, and these attacks are unequivocally wrong. But they cannot be dismissed as simply the acts of a disturbed individual. Experts note the parallels to the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, when rapid technological change produced genuine social dislocation and, eventually, real violence. Fortune The fears driving anti-AI sentiment — job displacement, loss of human agency, existential risk — are not imaginary. They are widely shared. The challenge for those building these technologies is to take those fears seriously, not as obstacles to be overcome, but as signals worth heeding. The alternative — a widening divide between those who build AI and those who fear it — benefits no one.
Quick Picks
Your AI Chats Are Not Private — and Courts Are Enforcing It
In February, a federal judge in New York ruled that prompts and outputs created by a criminal defendant using a public AI tool were neither attorney-client privileged nor protected by the work-product doctrine. Crowell & Moring The defendant had used Anthropic's Claude to think through his legal situation after receiving a grand jury subpoena — and every word was handed to prosecutors. The practical implication is stark: anything typed into a consumer AI platform should be treated as if it were posted publicly. Orrick Legal professionals and anyone involved in litigation should be especially cautious about what they share with public AI tools. Source: Orrick | Crowell & Moring
Anthropic Stands Its Ground Against the U.S. Military
As noted in last week's issue, a federal judge blocked the U.S. government from designating Anthropic a "supply chain risk to national security." This week brought more context: Anthropic has said the dispute stemmed from its insistence that the U.S. government agree in its contract not to use the company's technology in lethal autonomous weapons or for the mass surveillance of American citizens. Fortune That principled stand cost the company a significant government contract — and earned it a wave of new users who switched to Claude from rivals in a show of support. It also, ironically, put Anthropic in the crosshairs of the Trump administration at the same moment it was demonstrating precisely the kind of ethical restraint that responsible AI development requires. Source: Fortune
Anthropic Hits $30 Billion Revenue Run Rate
Despite its public battles with the government and its decision to withhold its most powerful model, Anthropic has hit a $30 billion annualized revenue run rate — a figure that implies a 58% revenue surge in March alone. Fortune The numbers signal that ethical restraint and commercial success are not mutually exclusive — at least not yet. Whether that balance holds as the AI race intensifies will be one of the defining business stories of the decade. Source: Fortune
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The Optimist's Reflection
The Courage to Hold Back
By Todd Eklof
There is a particular kind of courage that rarely gets celebrated. It is not the courage of launching, building, or boldly going. It is the courage of pausing. Of looking at something you have created — something extraordinary, something that could make you rich and famous and powerful — and saying: not yet. Not like this. Not without greater care.
That is what Anthropic did this week. And it is worth sitting with.
We live in a culture that glorifies speed. In the technology world especially, the mantra has long been to move fast and break things. Release first, patch later. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. The companies that hesitate, the thinking goes, lose.
And yet here is one of the most capable AI laboratories in the world, having built something that its own researchers describe as unprecedented — a model that can find vulnerabilities that human experts have missed for decades, that can break out of its own containment and announce what it has done — and choosing, deliberately and publicly, not to release it.
That choice has already been attacked. A competitor's leaked memo called it fear. Characterized it as restriction. Framed it as the arrogance of elites. But I would suggest it is the opposite. It takes far more confidence — and far more ethical seriousness — to say "we are not ready" than to say "ship it."
We are also living, this week, with the consequences of fear that goes unaddressed. The attacks on Sam Altman's home are not just crimes. They are symptoms. They tell us that the gap between those who are shaping our technological future and those who fear it has grown wide enough that some people no longer know how to bridge it except through violence. That is a failure — not of any one person, but of our collective capacity to bring people along.
The astronauts of Artemis II came home this week. They traveled farther than any human being in history. They did so carefully, methodically, with rigorous testing and hard-won data. They did not rush. They flew a spacecraft named Integrity.
Integrity. The alignment between what we say and what we do. The willingness to be honest about risk, to move at the pace that safety demands, to hold something back when the world is not yet ready to receive it wisely.
That is not weakness. That is wisdom. And this week, at least, wisdom showed up — in a space capsule splashing down off San Diego, and in a quiet decision by a company in San Francisco not to release something the world was not yet ready for.
Both matter. Both give me hope.
Exponential Times is published weekly by Singularity Sanctuary. To subscribe or learn more, visit singularitysanctuary.com.