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As someone who doesn't really follow the LLM space closely, I have been consistently turning to Anthropic when I want to use an LLM (usually to work through cod

As someone who doesn't really follow the LLM space closely, I have been consistently turning to Anthropic when I want to use an LLM (usually to work through coding problems) Beside Sonnet impressing me, I like Anthropic because there's less of an "icky" factor compared to OpenAI or even Google. I don't know how much better Anthropic actually is, but I don't think I'm the only one who chooses based on my perception of the company's values and social responsibility.

noirbot 2y ago
Yea, even if they're practically as bad, there's value in not having someone like Altman who's out there saying things about how many jobs he's excited to make obsolete and how much of the creative work of the world is worthless.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  I don’t think he ever said or even implied any percentage of ‘creative work of the world is worthless’? A lot less valuable then what artists may have desired or aspired to at the time of creation, sure, but definitely with some value.
  - staticman2 2y ago
    Doesn't he basically troll people on Twitter constantly?
  - kdpsooo 2y ago
    [dead]
  - noirbot 2y ago
    I mean, he's certainly acting as if he's entitled to train on all of it for free as long as it's not made by a big enough company that may be able to stop/sue him. And then feels entitled to complain about artists tainting the training data with tools. He has a very "wealth makes right" approach to the value of creative work.
- apwell23 2y ago
  or that 'AI is going to solve all of physics' or that 'AI is going to clone his brain by 2027' . PG famously called him 'Michael jordan of listening' , i would say he is 'Michael jordan of bullshitting'
  - kdpsooo 2y ago
    [dead]
  - thisiscrazy2k 2y ago
    Unfortunately, that position is already held by Musk.
    - apwell23 2y ago
      not when PG called him that. Even now i would say there is tough competition.
valbaca 2y ago
> or even Google > Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.
- uneekname 2y ago
  Well, there you go. These companies are always closer than they seem at first glance, and my preference for Anthropic may just be patting myself on the back.
  - rafark 2y ago
    But why though? Claude is REALLY good at programming. I love it
mossTechnician 2y ago
Personally, I find companies with names like "Anthropic" to be inherently icky too. Anthropic means "human," and if a company must remind me it is made of/by/for humans, it always feels less so. E.g. The Browser Company of New York is a group of friendly humans... Second, generative AI is machine generated; if there's any "making" of the training content, Anthropic didn't do it. Kind of like how OpenAI isn't open, the name doesn't match the product.
- derefr 2y ago
  > Anthropic means "human," and if a company must remind me it is made of/by/for humans Why do you think that that's their intended reading? I had assumed the name was implying "we're going to be an AGI company eventually; we want to make AI that acts like a human." > if there's any "making" of the training content, Anthropic didn't do it This is incorrect. First-gen LLM base models were made largely of raw Internet text corpus, but since then all the improvements have been from: • careful training data curation, using data-science tools (or LLMs!) to scan the training-data corpus for various kinds of noise or bias, and prune it out — this is "making" in the sense of "making a cut of a movie"; • synthesis of training data using existing LLMs, with careful prompting, and non-ML pre/post-processing steps — this is "making" in the sense of "making a song on a synthesizer"; • Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) — this is "making" in the sense of "noticing when the model is being dumb in practice" [from explicit feedback UX, async sentiment analysis of user responses in chat conversations, etc] and then converting those into weights on existing training data + additional synthesized "don't do this" training data.
  - ctoth 2y ago
    I read Anthropic as eluding to the Anthropic Principle as well as the doomsday argument and related memeplex[0] mixed with human-centric or about humans. Lovely naming IMHO. [0]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec17.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec17.html
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Der_Einzige 2y ago
Funny, I use Mistral because it has 'more" of that same factor, even in the name! They're the only company who doesn't lobotomize/censor their model in the RLHF/DPO/related phase. It's telling that they, along with huggingface, are from le france - a place with a notably less puritanical culture.
- falseAss 2y ago
  do you feel the less censorship yourself from their instruction tuned model, or is there some public reference to showcase? (i haven't used mistral model before). It's interesting if a major llm player adopt a different safety / alignment goal.

noirbot 2y ago

Yea, even if they're practically as bad, there's value in not having someone like Altman who's out there saying things about how many jobs he's excited to make obsolete and how much of the creative work of the world is worthless.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
I don’t think he ever said or even implied any percentage of ‘creative work of the world is worthless’? A lot less valuable then what artists may have desired or aspired to at the time of creation, sure, but definitely with some value.
- staticman2 2y ago
  Doesn't he basically troll people on Twitter constantly?
- kdpsooo 2y ago
  [dead]
- noirbot 2y ago
  I mean, he's certainly acting as if he's entitled to train on all of it for free as long as it's not made by a big enough company that may be able to stop/sue him. And then feels entitled to complain about artists tainting the training data with tools. He has a very "wealth makes right" approach to the value of creative work.
apwell23 2y ago
or that 'AI is going to solve all of physics' or that 'AI is going to clone his brain by 2027' . PG famously called him 'Michael jordan of listening' , i would say he is 'Michael jordan of bullshitting'
- kdpsooo 2y ago
  [dead]
- thisiscrazy2k 2y ago
  Unfortunately, that position is already held by Musk.
  - apwell23 2y ago
    not when PG called him that. Even now i would say there is tough competition.

valbaca 2y ago

> or even Google > Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.

uneekname 2y ago
Well, there you go. These companies are always closer than they seem at first glance, and my preference for Anthropic may just be patting myself on the back.
- rafark 2y ago
  But why though? Claude is REALLY good at programming. I love it

mossTechnician 2y ago

Personally, I find companies with names like "Anthropic" to be inherently icky too. Anthropic means "human," and if a company must remind me it is made of/by/for humans, it always feels less so. E.g. The Browser Company of New York is a group of friendly humans... Second, generative AI is machine generated; if there's any "making" of the training content, Anthropic didn't do it. Kind of like how OpenAI isn't open, the name doesn't match the product.

derefr 2y ago
> Anthropic means "human," and if a company must remind me it is made of/by/for humans Why do you think that that's their intended reading? I had assumed the name was implying "we're going to be an AGI company eventually; we want to make AI that acts like a human." > if there's any "making" of the training content, Anthropic didn't do it This is incorrect. First-gen LLM base models were made largely of raw Internet text corpus, but since then all the improvements have been from: • careful training data curation, using data-science tools (or LLMs!) to scan the training-data corpus for various kinds of noise or bias, and prune it out — this is "making" in the sense of "making a cut of a movie"; • synthesis of training data using existing LLMs, with careful prompting, and non-ML pre/post-processing steps — this is "making" in the sense of "making a song on a synthesizer"; • Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) — this is "making" in the sense of "noticing when the model is being dumb in practice" [from explicit feedback UX, async sentiment analysis of user responses in chat conversations, etc] and then converting those into weights on existing training data + additional synthesized "don't do this" training data.
- ctoth 2y ago
  I read Anthropic as eluding to the Anthropic Principle as well as the doomsday argument and related memeplex[0] mixed with human-centric or about humans. Lovely naming IMHO. [0]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec17.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec17.html
- deleted 2y ago
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Der_Einzige 2y ago

Funny, I use Mistral because it has 'more" of that same factor, even in the name! They're the only company who doesn't lobotomize/censor their model in the RLHF/DPO/related phase. It's telling that they, along with huggingface, are from le france - a place with a notably less puritanical culture.

falseAss 2y ago
do you feel the less censorship yourself from their instruction tuned model, or is there some public reference to showcase? (i haven't used mistral model before). It's interesting if a major llm player adopt a different safety / alignment goal.