Devon Thomas hardly seems like a renegade. Members of his bible study group, he tells me, would probably describe him as unfailingly kind and polite.
And yet Thomas is doing something that many in the AI world consider borderline blasphemous. His new company, Abliteration AI, removes safeguards from the world’s most powerful open-weight models. It also makes these models available to anyone.
As someone who covers AI and constantly hears about the need for increased safety, I was fascinated to learn about this subversive business venture. I reached out to Thomas, and we began corresponding by text and chatting on the phone. What I learned challenged my assumptions about the AI industry’s safety narrative—namely, that uncensored models are primarily the domain of criminals.
