4 ms·

I really love Anthropic, I'm building a business around it, and chat with Claude almost every time I go out for a beer after a long day... But having a valuatio

I really love Anthropic, I'm building a business around it, and chat with Claude almost every time I go out for a beer after a long day... But having a valuation equal to _Stripe_ seems a bit insane. Either they've got some secret sauce or AI hype is a bit much or Stripe is undervalued. Especially considering I pay for Claude, the beer, and my business _thru Stripe_!

bbor 2y ago
TBF Stripe is a (effective!) middleman for (very common!) transactions, whereas Anthropic is selling a service with the potential to replace full time employees. It takes a lot of transaction margins to add up to how much a corporation will pay to replace a department of 10 employees earning $100K down to one person... So in this context I don't think frequency of use is very illuminating! P.S. I'm so glad you're able to derive some joy from these new technologies, but I would also offer a soft suggestion to watch Season 3 of Westworld. It's probably not as good aesthetically as the previous two, but it's also pretty separated and deals throughout with the concept of AI therapists/friends, and how they might be a short-term comfort but a long-term threat to our individuality. Obviously a chat here and there with current LLMs is nowhere near that yet, but thought you might find it interesting!
vallode 2y ago
Do I understand correctly you chat wıth Claude as a form of social relief or are you talking about drinking beer and chatting with it about work/ideation etc. Either way, just curious! On topic though, I wholeheartedly agree that this valuation seems rather... unrealistic. I do think "hype" is how we currently handle a lot of valuations, for the worse in my opinion.
- treebeard901 2y ago
  All models can hallucinate pretty well... Which ones are best at being an intoxicated friend?
dingnuts 2y ago
>and chat with Claude almost every time I go out for a beer after a long day... with all due respect, how can you take yourself seriously doing this? I tried to use an LLM as a "cheap therapist" exactly one time and it felt so phony I quit almost instantly, after about four messages. The bot pretends to feel compassion for you! How does that not induce rage? It does for me. False empathy is way worse than nothing. And on top of it, you're talking to a hosted LLM! I hope you are not divulging anything personal to the random third party you're sending your thoughts to.. This stuff is going to be such a huge boon to authoritarian governments.
- beachtaxidriver 2y ago
  I mean... what do you think human therapists are doing. I'm sure they have empathy and do care for their patients... but it's definitely empathy-for-money too.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    A licensed therapist has some strict confidentiality requirements and legal protections. A chatbot has none of that. Everything that goes into the chatbot will be included in the next training set. Even worse is everything said to them will eventually be monetized. Someone willingly giving personal such personal details to a chatbot is shockingly naive.
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      Meh, this just seems like low signal chicken littling. You could say the same thing about typing sensitive info into Notes.app or even iOS about how the evil corporations will monetize it and how naive you'd be to do it. But that didn't pan out. Feel free to pass over useful tech, but no need to disparage others for not wearing your tinfoil hat.
      - giantrobot 2y ago
        You can watch enshittification of services happen in nearly real time. In just the past five years we've seen a number of services (Reddit, Twitter, etc) update their T&Cs granting themselves the ability to dump all the platform's contents into AI training. The end of ZIRP (free money) has seen tech companies chasing profit over growth and increasing squeezing users and rent seeking. In light of all that it's hardly "chicken littling" to assume that hosted AI chat bots can't be trusted with intimate and personal details. The companies running them should be seen as inherently untrustworthy.

bbor 2y ago

TBF Stripe is a (effective!) middleman for (very common!) transactions, whereas Anthropic is selling a service with the potential to replace full time employees. It takes a lot of transaction margins to add up to how much a corporation will pay to replace a department of 10 employees earning $100K down to one person... So in this context I don't think frequency of use is very illuminating! P.S. I'm so glad you're able to derive some joy from these new technologies, but I would also offer a soft suggestion to watch Season 3 of Westworld. It's probably not as good aesthetically as the previous two, but it's also pretty separated and deals throughout with the concept of AI therapists/friends, and how they might be a short-term comfort but a long-term threat to our individuality. Obviously a chat here and there with current LLMs is nowhere near that yet, but thought you might find it interesting!

vallode 2y ago

Do I understand correctly you chat wıth Claude as a form of social relief or are you talking about drinking beer and chatting with it about work/ideation etc. Either way, just curious! On topic though, I wholeheartedly agree that this valuation seems rather... unrealistic. I do think "hype" is how we currently handle a lot of valuations, for the worse in my opinion.

treebeard901 2y ago
All models can hallucinate pretty well... Which ones are best at being an intoxicated friend?

dingnuts 2y ago

>and chat with Claude almost every time I go out for a beer after a long day... with all due respect, how can you take yourself seriously doing this? I tried to use an LLM as a "cheap therapist" exactly one time and it felt so phony I quit almost instantly, after about four messages. The bot pretends to feel compassion for you! How does that not induce rage? It does for me. False empathy is way worse than nothing. And on top of it, you're talking to a hosted LLM! I hope you are not divulging anything personal to the random third party you're sending your thoughts to.. This stuff is going to be such a huge boon to authoritarian governments.

beachtaxidriver 2y ago
I mean... what do you think human therapists are doing. I'm sure they have empathy and do care for their patients... but it's definitely empathy-for-money too.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  A licensed therapist has some strict confidentiality requirements and legal protections. A chatbot has none of that. Everything that goes into the chatbot will be included in the next training set. Even worse is everything said to them will eventually be monetized. Someone willingly giving personal such personal details to a chatbot is shockingly naive.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    Meh, this just seems like low signal chicken littling. You could say the same thing about typing sensitive info into Notes.app or even iOS about how the evil corporations will monetize it and how naive you'd be to do it. But that didn't pan out. Feel free to pass over useful tech, but no need to disparage others for not wearing your tinfoil hat.
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      You can watch enshittification of services happen in nearly real time. In just the past five years we've seen a number of services (Reddit, Twitter, etc) update their T&Cs granting themselves the ability to dump all the platform's contents into AI training. The end of ZIRP (free money) has seen tech companies chasing profit over growth and increasing squeezing users and rent seeking. In light of all that it's hardly "chicken littling" to assume that hosted AI chat bots can't be trusted with intimate and personal details. The companies running them should be seen as inherently untrustworthy.