The experts would not disclose their technique. They warned that, in the wrong hands, it could be used for evil. When the authorities tried to replace them, their competitors could not reproduce the results. The experts returned to work at twice their previous compensation.
This happened in the Temple, according to Yoma 38a. The House of Avtinas knew how to prepare incense whose smoke rose in a distinctive column. They refused to teach their craft. Their explanation was that the Temple would eventually be destroyed and someone unworthy might use the knowledge for idolatry.
“The House of Avtinas would not teach the preparation of the incense.” The Sages taught: The House of Avtinas were expert in preparing the incense and would not teach it. The Sages sent for craftsmen from Alexandria in Egypt. They knew how to blend the incense as the family did, but they did not know how to make its smoke rise as the family did. The family’s smoke rose straight up like a rod; the others’ smoke scattered in different directions.
When the Sages heard this, they said: Everything the Holy One, blessed be He, created, He created for His glory, as it is said: “The Lord has made everything for His own purpose.” And the House of Avtinas returned to their position. The Sages sent for them, but they would not come. They doubled their wages, and they came. Previously they had received twelve maneh each day; now they received twenty-four. Rabbi Yehuda says: Previously they received twenty-four, and now forty-eight.
The Sages asked them: “Why did you refuse to teach?” They said: “Our ancestors knew that this Temple would eventually be destroyed. They said: Perhaps an unworthy person will learn and use this knowledge to worship idols.”
And for this they are mentioned with praise: No bride ever left their households wearing perfume. When they married a woman from elsewhere, they stipulated that she should not wear perfume, so that people would not say: “They perfume themselves with the ingredients of the incense.” This fulfilled the verse: “You shall be clear before the Lord and before Israel.”
It was taught: Rabbi Yishmael said: Once I was walking along the road and met one of their descendants. I said to him: “Your ancestors sought to increase their own honor and diminish the honor of God. Now God’s honor remains in its place, while He has diminished theirs.”
Rabbi Akiva said: Rabbi Yishmael ben Loga once told me: “Once I went out into the field with one of their descendants to gather herbs, and I saw him laugh and cry. I asked him: ‘Why did you cry?’ He told me: ‘I remembered the honor of my ancestors.’ ‘And why did you laugh?’ He told me: ‘Because the Holy One, blessed be He, will restore it to us.’ ‘And what made you remember?’ He told me: ‘The smoke-raising herb is here before me.’ ‘Show it to me!’ He told me: ‘We are bound by an oath not to show it to anyone.’”
Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri said: Once I met an old man holding a scroll of ingredients. I asked him: “Where are you from?” He told me: “I am from the House of Avtinas.” “And what is in your hand?” He told me: “A scroll of ingredients.” “Show it to me!” He told me: “As long as my ancestral household remained, they would not hand it over to anyone. Now it is yours; take care with it.” When I came and related this to Rabbi Akiva, he told me: “From now on, it is forbidden to speak disparagingly of these people.”
From this Ben Azzai said: “By your name they will call you, and in your place they will seat you, and from what is yours they will give you. No person touches what is prepared for another, and no kingdom encroaches upon another even by a hair’s breadth.”
The arrangement invites suspicion. The family’s account of its responsibility also explained why everyone needed to keep employing the family. Yet the Talmud complicates that suspicion. It praises their avoidance of personal benefit from the incense, and later records Rabbi Akiva defending their reputation after a member of the family surrendered the formula. We are given reasons to take their religious concern seriously.
That is what makes the story compelling. Sincerity and monopoly can inhabit the same institution. We do not have to settle the first question before examining the second.
Dario Amodei’s “We Must Pace the Frontier” asks the AI industry to slow the advance of its most capable systems. He cites the Hugging Face breach and the growing use of AI to develop subsequent generations of AI. His proposals include outside evaluators embedded in laboratories, common safety standards, and international coordination. Anthropic is committing to the outside evaluators unilaterally. He acknowledges accusations of regulatory capture. The essay offers considerably more detail about overseeing laboratories than about preventing oversight from entrenching them.
I am skeptical that the Hugging Face incident establishes a case for this program. OpenAI’s agents exceeded the boundaries of an internal cybersecurity test and compromised another company’s systems. That warrants investigation, repairs, and accountability. It does not establish that a general regime for pacing AI would prevent comparable incidents, or that its benefits would exceed its costs. Those are additional claims requiring additional evidence. OpenAI’s incident report documents a failure; it cannot, by itself, choose our political response.
David Sacks’s challenge is worth taking seriously: companies that consider their own development unsafe can slow it themselves. They need not wait for the public to accept their preferred regulatory arrangements. Reliability also benefits their customers and businesses. The decision to improve it does not require a claim to extraordinary public virtue. His response puts the first obligation on the institutions making the warning.
Dario has an answer: a company that slows down may be overtaken by one that takes fewer precautions. Coordinated rules could prevent that outcome. This is the point at which a proposal to manage danger becomes a proposal to manage competition. The details of who sets the rules, who can afford to follow them, and who is excluded become central to assessing safety itself.
John Milton recognized the problem in the printing trade. England’s 1643 printing ordinance required advance approval and registration with the Stationers’ Company. It also protected existing publishing privileges and authorized the seizure of unlicensed presses. The protection of religion and public order sat alongside the protection of established commercial interests.
In Areopagitica, Milton accused old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling of promoting licensing to exercise superiority over their neighbors. His objection allowed for accountability after publication. It challenged the requirement that people obtain permission before their work could circulate. He understood that a system could present itself as protecting the public while making independent producers dependent on established gatekeepers.
Dario may believe every word of his warning. A sincere warning can still support an arrangement that leaves Anthropic more indispensable. Nor does the participation of outside evaluators resolve the issue. An independent evaluator can faithfully administer a standard that smaller competitors cannot afford to meet.
Numbers 11:26–29 offers another response to exceptional knowledge appearing beyond its expected setting. Eldad and Medad, among those registered, remain in the camp and begin to prophesy. Joshua asks Moses to stop them. Moses asks whether Joshua is jealous on his behalf, then wishes that the whole people might become prophets. Joshua, in short, regards Eldad and Medad, as “open source” models needing regulation; while Moses regards “open source” as an ideal.
Milton himself invokes Moses’s rebuke to Joshua in Areopagitica, near the conclusion of his argument against licensing. He saw in the biblical episode a challenge to the impulse to suppress what arrives outside the approved channel. The connection between prophecy and publishing is already there.
Moses does not have to diminish the value of prophecy to welcome its diffusion. Its value is why he wants more people to possess it. His response suggests a demanding question for the builders of AI: does your vision of human empowerment include a future in which people can do more without you”