Anthropic Removes Founding Safety Pause Commitment in Responsible Scaling Policy Version 3.0

Anthropic released version 3.0 of its Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP) in February 2026, eliminating the company's original commitment to pause AI development if safety could not be guaranteed in advance. The safety pause provision had been a defining feature of Anthropic's voluntary governance framework since the company introduced the RSP in 2023. The removal marks a material shift in how Anthropic's self-imposed development constraints are structured, moving away from a precautionary halt mechanism toward an updated framework whose specific replacement controls have not been fully detailed in public reporting. For enterprise compliance teams, this change is relevant to vendor risk assessments and third-party AI governance reviews, as Anthropic's RSP has been cited by organizations as evidence of supplier-level safety commitments when procuring or integrating Claude-based products. Compliance teams that reference Anthropic's published governance commitments in internal risk documentation, procurement due diligence, or regulatory disclosures should review whether those references remain accurate under the new policy version.