In the spring of 2026, Anthropic released to the public what it described as its most capable AI model to date… and then the U.S. government shut it down seventy-two hours later. That subsequent sequence of events, strange and almost operatic in its timing, is the kind of thing we might genuinely call “unprecedented.” It was also a crystalline illustration of something philosophers have been decrying for decades: the difference between performing ethical responsibility and actually exercising it.

What does it mean to reason morally about the risks of a technology about which we do not yet fully understand its potential impacts in the future? Given that a very small number of decisionmakers will shape the conditions of life for everyone else for the next several decades, what do we owe to the people who will bear the consequences of those decisions without having had any say in them? When “ethical AI” has become a brand strategy rather than a practice, how do we hold anyone accountable for the gap between what they say and what they do?