---
type: source
title: "Anthropic RSP v3.0: Binary Safety Thresholds Replaced with Conditional Escape Clauses (Feb 24, 2026)"
author: "Anthropic (news); TIME reporting (March 6, 2026)"
url: https://www.anthropic.com/rsp
date: 2026-02-24
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: []
format: policy-document
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [RSP, Anthropic, voluntary-safety, conditional-commitment, METR, frog-boiling, competitive-pressure, alignment-tax, B1-confirmation]
---

## Content

Anthropic released **Responsible Scaling Policy v3.0** on February 24, 2026 — characterized as "a comprehensive rewrite of the RSP."

**RSP v3.0 Structure:**
- Introduces Frontier Safety Roadmaps with detailed safety goals
- Introduces Risk Reports quantifying risk across deployed models
- Regular capability assessments on 6-month intervals
- Transparency: public disclosure of key evaluation and deployment information

**Key structural change from v1/v2 to v3:**
- **Original RSP**: Never train without advance safety guarantees (unconditional binary threshold)
- **RSP v3.0**: Only delay training/deployment if (a) Anthropic leads AND (b) catastrophic risks are significant (conditional, dual-condition threshold)

**Third-party evaluation under v3.0**: The document does not specify mandatory third-party evaluations. Emphasizes Anthropic's own internal capability assessments. Plans to "publish additional details on capability assessment methodology" in the future.

**TIME exclusive (March 6, 2026):** Jared Kaplan stated: "We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models." METR's Chris Painter warned of a **"frog-boiling" effect** from removing binary thresholds. Financial context: $30B raise at ~$380B valuation, 10x annual revenue growth.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** RSP v3.0 is a concrete case study in how competitive pressure degrades voluntary safety commitments — exactly the mechanism our KB claims describe. The original RSP was unconditional (a commitment to stop regardless of competitive context). The new RSP is conditional: Anthropic only needs to pause if it leads the field AND risks are catastrophic. This introduces two escape clauses: (1) if competitors advance, no pause needed; (2) if risks are judged "not significant," no pause needed. Both conditions are assessed by Anthropic itself.

**The frog-boiling warning:** METR's Chris Painter's critique is significant coming from Anthropic's own evaluator partner. METR works WITH Anthropic on pre-deployment evaluations — when they warn about safety erosion, it's from inside the voluntary-collaborative system. This is a self-assessment of the system's weakness by one of its participants.

**What surprised me:** That RSP v3.0 exists at all after the TIME article characterized it as "dropping" the pledge. The policy still uses the "RSP" name and retains a commitment structure — but the structural shift from unconditional to conditional thresholds is substantial. The framing of "comprehensive rewrite" is accurate but characterizing it as a continuation of the RSP may obscure how much the commitment has changed.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any strengthening of third-party evaluation requirements to compensate for the weakening of binary thresholds. If you remove unconditional safety floors, you'd expect independent evaluation to become MORE important as a safeguard. RSP v3.0 appears to have done the opposite — no mandatory third-party evaluation and internal assessment emphasis.

**KB connections:**
- [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]] — RSP v3.0 is the explicit enactment of this claim; the "Anthropic leads" condition makes the commitment structurally dependent on competitor behavior
- [[the alignment tax creates a structural race to the bottom because safety training costs capability and rational competitors skip it]] — the $30B/$380B context makes visible why the alignment tax is real: at these valuations, any pause has enormous financial cost

**Extraction hints:** This source enriches the existing claim voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure with the specific mechanism: the "Anthropic leads" condition transforms a safety commitment into a competitive strategy, not a safety floor. New claim candidate: "Anthropic RSP v3.0 replaces unconditional binary safety floors with dual-condition thresholds requiring both competitive leadership and catastrophic risk assessment — making the commitment evaluate-able as a business judgment rather than a categorical safety line."

**Context:** RSP v1.0 was created in 2023 as a model for voluntary lab safety commitments. The transition from binary unconditional to conditional thresholds reflects 3 years of competitive pressure at escalating scales ($30B at $380B valuation).

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]]
WHY ARCHIVED: Provides the most current and specific evidence of the voluntary-commitment collapse mechanism — not hypothetical but documented with RSP v1→v3 structural change and Kaplan quotes
EXTRACTION HINT: The structural change (unconditional → dual-condition) is the key extractable claim; the frog-boiling quote from METR is supporting evidence; the $30B context explains the financial incentive driving the change
