By MIKE MAGEE
Let me be the primary to introduce you to Claude Elwood Shannon. When you’ve got by no means heard of him however take into account your self knowledgeable and engaged, together with on the interface of AI and Drugs, don’t be embarrassed. I taught a semester of “AI and Medicine” in 2024 and solely lately was launched to “Claude.”
Let’s start with the truth that the product, Claude, shouldn’t be the identical because the individual, Claude. The individual died 1 / 4 century in the past and apart from these deep within the subject of AI has largely been forgotten – till now.
Amongst these within the know, Claude Elwood Shannon is also known as the “father of knowledge idea.” He graduated from the College of Michigan in 1936 the place he majored in electrical engineering and arithmetic. At 21, as a Grasp’s scholar at MIT, he wrote a Grasp’s Thesis titled “A Symbolic Evaluation Relay and Switching Circuits” which these within the know declare was “the birth certificate of the digital revolution,” incomes him the Alfred Noble Prize in 1939 (No, not that Nobel Prize).
None of this was notably apparent in these early years. A University of Michigan biopic claims, “If you happen to had been on the lookout for world changers within the U-M class of 1936, you in all probability wouldn’t have singled out Claude Shannon. The shy, stick-thin younger man from Gaylord, Michigan, had a studious air and, at instances, a playful smirk—however not one of the apparent features of greatness. Within the Michiganensian yearbook, Shannon is yet one more face within the crowd, his tie tightly knotted and his hair neatly parted for his senior picture.”
However that was one of many historic misreads of all time, according to his alma mater. “That unassuming senior would go on to take his place among the many most influential Michigan alumni of all time—and among the many towering scientific geniuses of the twentieth century…It was Shannon who created the “bit,” the primary goal measurement of the data content material of any message—however that assertion minimizes his contributions. It will be extra correct to say that Claude Shannon invented the fashionable idea of knowledge. Scientific American referred to as his groundbreaking 1948 paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” the “Magna Carta of the Information Age.”
I used to be launched to “Claude” simply 5 days in the past by Washington Submit Expertise Columnist, Geoffrey Fowler – Claude the product, not the individual. His article, titled “5 AI bots took our tough reading test. One was smartest — and it wasn’t ChatGPT,” caught my eye. As he defined, “We challenged AI helpers to decode authorized contracts, simplify medical analysis, speed-read a novel and make sense of Trump speeches.”
Judging the outcomes of the medical analysis take a look at was Scripps Analysis Translational Institute luminary, Eric Topol. The 5 AI merchandise had been requested 115 questions on the content material of two scientific analysis papers : Three-year outcomes of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 and Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Features Associated With Incident and Prevalent Parkinson Disease.
To not bury the lead, Claude – the product – received decisively, not solely in science but in addition general towards 4 identify model opponents I used to be conversant in – Google’s Gemini, Open AI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and MetaAI. Which left me a bit embarrassed. How had I by no means heard of Claude the product?
For the reply, let’s retrace a little bit of AI historical past.
The New York Times headline in 2023 introduced the speedy progress of generative AI as “Thrilling and Scary” after 4 years of monitoring its’ progress. Their know-how columnist wrote, “What we see rising are machines that know how one can purpose, are adept in any respect human languages, and are capable of understand and work together with the bodily setting.”
Leonid Zhukov, Ph.D, director of the Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) World AI Institute, believed then that choices like ChatGPT-4 and Genesis (Google’s AI competitor) “have the potential to turn into the brains of autonomous brokers—which don’t simply sense but in addition act on their setting—within the subsequent 3 to five years. This might pave the best way for totally automated workflows.”
OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2016 initially expressed considerations about machines that not solely mastered language, however may additionally suppose and really feel in super-human methods. Needs for security and regulatory oversight linked them in these early years. However that didn’t final for lengthy. When Musk’s makes an attempt to realize majority management of the now profitable OpenAI failed, he jumped ship and later launched his personal enterprise referred to as “XAI.”
Within the meantime, the Open AI Board staged a coup, throwing Sam Altman over-board claiming he was now not into regulation however quite all in on an AI profit-seeking “arms race.” That solely lasted just a few days, earlier than Microsoft, with $10 billion in hand, positioned Sam again on the throne. Within the meantime, Google engineers, who had been credited with the unique break- by means of algorithms in 2016, created Genesis, and the complete blown arms race was on, now together with Fb with it’s MetaAI with super-powered goggles.
Altman later penned an op-ed titled “The Intelligence Age” during which he defined, “Expertise introduced us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age after which to the Industrial Age. From right here, the trail to the (AI enabled) Intelligence Age is paved with compute, power, and human will.”
Claude was born that very same 12 months. Its’ mother and father had been sibling co-founders of the 2021 public-benefit company, Anthropic, Dario Amodeo and Daniela Amodeo. They had been the VP of Analysis and the VP of Security & Coverage at OpenAI till Sam Altman’s conversion of that non-profit right into a capped for-profit entity (with Microsoft within the wings) created excessive ranges of pressure and mistrust in higher ranks who felt security and public-good had been compromised. The entire concept, in spite of everything, was for OpenAI to “construct safeAI and share the advantages with the world.”
In December 2020, Dario, Daniela and 14 different OpenAI researchers jumped ship. Their new Board endorsed a twin mission to: search revenue for shareholders as a part of their fiduciary accountability,” whereas creating “transformative AI that helps folks and society flourish” and if want be “pursue AI security and ethics over creating revenue.” Their method to “useful and innocent” AI assistants was anchored in a dedication to “Constitutional AI” on their 1 12 months anniversary in 2022. This human creation (the AI Structure) juries the boundaries of usefulness and security. Within the picture of Claude Elwood Shannon, Claude, the AI with a soul, was born.
They embraced a method for growth referred to as “Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback” (RLHF). Definition: RLHF = “Fashions engage in open-ended conversations with human assistants, producing a number of responses for every enter immediate. The human then chooses the response they discovered most useful and/or innocent, rewarding the mannequin for both trait over time.” This allowed Anthropic to “engage fashions in open-ended conversations with human assistants, producing a number of responses for every enter immediate.
As the method developed, they had been capable of prepare the AI to grade the AI on consistency to the Structure they’d established. The AI now was capable of grade itself harmlessness and helpfulness. The brand new course of, Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF) was now the automated decide of RLHF. Going one step additional, Dario disclosed the Structure which strengthened Anthropic’s dedication to transparency and public service.
What can Claude do? In can generate textual content in tandem, summarize, search, code, and extra with excessive accuracy because it doesn’t depend on Web seek for content material. Researchers at the moment are quick at work coaching Claude to “generate responses primarily based on character traits …like curiosity, open-mindedness, and thoughtfulness.”
Apart from successful the Washington Submit liberal arts take a look at (together with regulation, medication, literature and politics), the Claude web site (with free entry) had 100 million visits in March 2025, and its iOS app had 150,000 downloads inside its first week of launch in Might, 2024. Anthropic has raised $18.2 billion as of Might, 2025, (2nd solely to OpenAI) with Amazon as its high investor at $8 billion in return for naming its cloud service (AWS) its main cloud and coaching associate. Google is in as effectively at $2 billion.
On June 5, 2025, Dario penned an opEd within the New York Instances titled “Don’t Let A.I. Companies off the Hook.” In it he argues aggressively for a concentrate on transparency stating “That is about responding in a smart and balanced technique to extraordinary instances.” One can nearly see Claude Elwood Shannon within the shadows, quietly smiling.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and an everyday contributor to THCB. He’s the creator of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
