Anthropic to provide California government with AI tools

Anthropic has partnered with California to provide state government agencies a discount on its AI tools such as chatbot Claude. Announced on Monday, the agreement will see state workers use Claude for a "wide range of tasks," including analysing information and drafting documents, in an effort to increase efficiency.

"AI should not replace the human work of government; it should help our workers move faster, solve problems more effectively, and deliver better results for Californians," California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Under the partnership, Anthropic will provide Californian state agencies and local governments with access to Claude at a 50 percent discount. The Californian AI company will also offer government workers free training, as well as support and advice from Anthropic's developers on how to use AI in their work.

California's partnership with Anthropic is intended to facilitate increased adoption of AI by its government workers. Claude is just the first "AI productivity tool" that will be offered to all California state agencies though a new shared portal, which will gather multiple such tools for government use.

"CDT [California Department of Technology] is partnering with departments across the state to leverage the state’s purchasing power to make it easy to procure new tools, fast and for the best price," said California State Chief Information Officer and CDT director Chris Given.

California state government agencies have already been using Claude prior to this week's deal. The state government previously used Claude to facilitate its surveying of Californians' views on AI, though exactly what role it played in this is unclear. Claude was further used to develop the AI tool Poppy, created specifically for state workers dealing with common business needs. California's DMV is using Claude as well, apparently to "improve customer service and lower wait times."

"As state employees, our goal is to provide our fellow Californians with the best possible service," said Government Operations Agency Secretary Nick Maduros. "To do that, we need to make sure our teams have access to the best modern tools, including Claude and other emerging technologies."

Some AI algorithms can have practical uses, such as ones designed to identify patterns in given datasets for further examination by humans. However, generative AI chatbots are notorious for hallucinating false information, landing users in hot water after failing to independently verify the output. Multiple legal professionals have faced severe penalties after being caught using generative AI to draft documents which are riddled with errors.

Anthropic has admitted that its AI models aren't infallible or completely accurate all the time. As such, it stands to reason that anyone using Claude should double-check all its output by researching and factchecking it themselves, especially if it's being used for important government work. However, considering that such diligence could very well reduce efficiency and increase employees' workloads rather than lessen them, the question is whether anyone will actually take such care.

Anthropic's rocky recent history with the Trump administration

Despite California embracing Anthropic, the AI company has recently had a much frostier response at the federal level. 

In February, President Donald Trump claimed Anthropic was run by "Leftwing nut jobs" and ordered all federal agencies to stop using its technology. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that the rift was because the company refused to comply with demands from the Department of War that it remove safeguards against using AI for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. (OpenAI stepped in to take on the contract instead, sparking significant backlash online.)

The Trump administration subsequently labelled Anthropic a "supply chain risk" and potential national security danger in March, making it the first U.S. company to receive such a designation. Earlier this month, the U.S. government further ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its recently released Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 AI tools by anyone who is not a U.S. entity (including foreign nationals residing in the U.S.), forcing the company to take them down altogether.

Trump's ire against Anthropic appeared to ease less than a week later, after the U.S. president encountered Amodei at the G7 summit and found him "a nice guy." Even so, as the relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration currently stands, a federal partnership seems unlikely in the immediate future.