10 ms·

Claude is a space to think

• mynti 8mo ago
  I think this says a lot about the business approach of Anthopic compared to OpenAI. Just the vast amount of free messages you get from OpenAI is crazy that turning a profit with that seems impossible. Anthropic is growing more slowly but it seems like they are not running a crazy deficit. They do not need to put ads or porn in their chatbot
• electsaudit0q 8mo ago
  [dead]
  • satvikpendem 8mo ago
    > its not about getting answers, its about having a patient collaborator Looks like you're picking up LLM speak too! https://www.theverge.com/openai/686748/chatgpt-linguistic-impact-common-word-usage https://www.theverge.com/openai/686748/chatgpt-linguistic-im...
    • cwnyth 8mo ago
      You mean human speech that LLMs were modeled after? Or was JFK influenced by LLMs, too?
      • satvikpendem 8mo ago
        There are certainly more tells and more people are speaking like LLMs now where they hadn't before.
        • cwnyth 8mo ago
          I agree that there are a ton of tells, but I wouldn't say picking up some new vocabulary is "speaking like" just yet. It's still early, though, so more studies are needed.
• raahelb 8mo ago
  > Anthropic is focused on businesses, developers, and helping our users flourish. Our business model is straightforward: we generate revenue through enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions, and we reinvest that revenue into improving Claude for our users. This is a choice with tradeoffs, and we respect that other AI companies might reasonably reach different conclusions. Very diplomatic of them to say "we respect that other AI companies might reasonably reach different conclusions" while also taking a dig at OpenAI on their youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA
• JohnnyMarcone 8mo ago
  I really hope Anthropic turns out to be one of the 'good guys', or at least a net positive. It appears they trend in the right direction: - Have not kissed the Ring. - Oppose blocking AI regulation that other's support (e.g. They do not support banning state AI laws [2]). - Committing to no ads. - Willing to risk defense department contract over objections to use for lethal operations [1] The things that are concerning: - Palantir partnership (I'm unclear about what this actually is) [3] - Have shifted stances as competition increased (e.g. seeking authoritarian investors [4]) It inevitable that they will have to compromise on values as competition increases and I struggle parsing the difference marketing and actually caring about values. If an organization cares about values, it's suboptimal not to highlight that at every point via marketing. The commitment to no ads is obviously good PR but if it comes from a place of values, it's a win-win. I'm curious, how do others here think about Anthropic? [1]https://archive.is/Pm2QS https://archive.is/Pm2QS [2]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/opinion/anthropic-ceo-regulate-transparency.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JlA.6SV6.hqcvsT7z64p9&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/opinion/anthropic-ceo-reg... [3]https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Anthropic-and-Palantir-Partner-to-Bring-Claude-AI-Models-to-AWS-for-U.S.-Government-Intelligence-and-Defense-Operations/ https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Anthropic-a... [4]https://archive.is/4NGBE https://archive.is/4NGBE
  • skybrian 8mo ago
    When powerful people, companies, and other organizations like governments do a whole lot of very good and very bad things, figuring out whether this rounds to “more good than bad” or “more bad than good” is kind of a fraught question. I think Anthropic is still in the “more good than bad” range, but it doesn’t make sense to think about it along the lines of heros versus villains. They’ve done things that I put in the “seems bad” column, and will likely do more. Also more good things, too. They’re moving towards becoming load-bearing infrastructure and then answering specific questions about what you should do about it become rather situational.
  • marxisttemp 8mo ago
    I think I’m not allowed to say what I think should happen to anyone who works with Palantir.
• tizzzzz 8mo ago
  That's true. CI in all of my conversations with AIThat's true. In all my conversations with AI, I think CIaude's thinking is the richest.
• ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
  So apparently they're going to run a Super Bowl ad about ChatGPT having ads (without saying ChatGPT of course)........ Has doing an ad that focuses only on something about your competitor ever been the best play? Talk about yourself. Obviously it's a play, honing in on privacy/anti-ad concerns, like a Mozilla type angle, but really it's a huge ad buy just to slag off the competitors. Worth the expense just to drive that narrative? Ads playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf2m23nhTg1OW258b3XBiJME7tgrRk-KI https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf2m23nhTg1OW258b3XBi...
  • badsectoracula 8mo ago
    Wasn't Apple's iconic 1984 ad basically that?
    • ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
      ah, good one. Was it Big Blue or Big Brother in general being referenced in that one? Either way I suppose Apple didn't even say much of anything about their product in that one where Anthropic is at least highlighting a feature.
      • pseudalopex 8mo ago
        People understood blue Big Brother represented Big Blue. And Steve Jobs named IBM when he discussed the ad.
    • gowld 8mo ago
      Apple's ad had a woman dressed like a Hooter's waitress to represent themselves. That makes themselves the focus of attention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc
      • jeffbee 8mo ago
        That's a pretty weird take. Her costume is typical of track and field athletes of the time, except that her jersey represents the nation of the Apple Macintosh, which you can barely notice in the ad because it flashes by in a split second.
• simianwords 8mo ago
  I always found Anthropic to be trying hard to signal as one of the "good guys". I wonder how they can get away without showing Ads when ChatGPT has to be doing it. Will the enterprise business be that profitable that Ads are not required? Maybe OpenAI is going for something different - democratising access to vast majority of the people. Remember that ChatGPT is what people know about and what people use the free version of. Who's to say that making Ads by doing this but also prodiding more access is the wrong choice? Also, Claude holds nothing against ChatGPT in search. From my previous experiences, ChatGPT is just way better at deep searches through the internet than Claude.
  • insane_dreamer 8mo ago
    Clause isn’t trying to compete with OpenAI in the general consumer chat bot space.
    • alt227 8mo ago
      None of the ai companies are, they are all looking for those multi billion deals to provide the backplane for services like Copilot and Siri. Consumer chatbots are pure marketing, no company is going to make anything off those $20 per month subs to ai chatbots.
  • Etheryte 8mo ago
    ChatGPT is providing a ridiculous amount of free service to gain/keep traction. Others also have free tiers, but to a much lesser extent. It's similar to Uber selling rides at a loss to win markets. It will get you traction, yes, but the bill has to be paid one day.
    • timpera 8mo ago
      Even when you're subscribed, they're providing unreasonable amounts of compute for the price. I am subscribed to both Claude and ChatGPT, and Claude's limits are so tiny compared to ChatGPT's that it often feels like a rip-off.
• tiffanyh 8mo ago
  What other interaction models exist for Claude given that Anthropic seems to be stressing so much that this is for "conversations"? (Props for them for doing this, don't know how this is long-term sustainable for them though ... especially given they want to IPO and there will be huge revenue/margin pressures)
• rishabhaiover 8mo ago
  What makes Anthropic seem like early Apple is not just the unique taste, but the courage to stand firm with their vision of what the product should be.
  • gowld 8mo ago
    Only 4 years old, they haven't existed long enough to be "firm".
    • mcherm 8mo ago
      Making formal, public statements like this is a good start. It is certainly better than NOT making these sorts of statements.
    • baal80spam 8mo ago
      Yeah. Does anyone remember how long did it take GOOG to remove "Don't be evil" from their motto?
  • nickthegreek 8mo ago
    That courage was nowhere to be found when Palantir rolled up with a truckload of cash.
    • rendang 8mo ago
      What's the problem with Palantir?
      • nickthegreek 8mo ago
        I am going to assume that is a question asked in good faith by an inquisitive mind. That assumed, asking that question to any proper LLM will provide an answer more in depth than I am willing to type this evening. Palantir, to me, is the weaponization of big data, where advanced analytics are used to target vulnerable populations. Not just abroad, but here against its own citizens. It is the dystopic enabler that we have been warned about. Palantir and the words from its leadership seem to me to be in direct opposition to parts of the Constitution doc that Anthropic hold up to show their ethics and seriousness.
• politelemon 8mo ago
  This will be an amusing post to revisit in the internet archives when or if they do introduce ads in the future but dressed up in a different presentation and naming. Ultimately the investors will come calling.
  • disease 8mo ago
    My thoughts exactly. They are using the Google playbook of "don't be evil" until it becomes extremely profitable to be evil.
  • tiffanyh 8mo ago
    Won't all the ad revenue come from commerce use cases ... and they seem to be excluding that from this announcement: > AI will increasingly interact with commerce, and we look forward to supporting this in ways that help our users. We’re particularly interested in the potential of agentic commerce
    • observationist 8mo ago
      Why bother with ads when you can just pay an AI platform to prefer products directly? Then every time an agentic decision occurs, the product preference is baked in, no human in the loop. AdTech will be supplanted by BriberyTech.
      • keeganpoppen 8mo ago
        if llm ads become a real thing, let’s acknowledge that this is exactly what will happen in no uncertain terms.
        • observationist 8mo ago
          The only chance of that happening is if Altman somehow feels sufficiently shamed into abandoning the lazy enshittification track to monetization. I don't think they have an accurate model for what they're doing - they're treating it like just another app or platform, using tools and methods designed around social media and app store analytics. They're not treating it like what it is, which is a completely novel technology with more potential than the industrial revolution for completely reshaping how humans interact with each other and the universe, fundamentally disrupting cognitive labor and access to information. The total mismatch between what they're doing with it to monetize and what the thing actually means to civilization is the biggest signal yet that Altman might not be the right guy to run things. He's savvy and crafty and extraordinarily good at the palace intrigue and corporate maneuvering, but if AdTech is where they landed, it doesn't seem like he's got the right mental map for AI, for all he talks a good game.
• JoshPurtell 8mo ago
  Important to note Anthropic has next to no consumer usage
  • Der_Einzige 8mo ago
    Wrong (in trumps voice)
    • JoshPurtell 8mo ago
      From Sama "More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do" Facts don't care about your feelings
      • Der_Einzige 8mo ago
        Sama lies all the time.
• sdrinf 8mo ago
  Besides the editorial control -which openai openly flagged to want to remain unbiased- there is a deeper issue with ads-based revenue models in AI: that of margins. If you want ads to cover compute & make margins -looking at roughly $50 ARPU at mature FB/GOOG level- you have two levers: sell more advertisement, or offer dumber models. This is exactly what chatgpt 5 was about. By tweaking both the model selector (thinking/non-thinking), and using a significantly sparser thinking model (capping max spend per conversation turn), they massively controlled costs, but did so at the expense of intelligence, responsiveness, curiosity, skills, and all the things I've valued in O3. This was the point I dumped openai, and went with claude. This business model issue is a subtle one, but a key reason why advertisement revenue model is not compatible (or competitive!) with "getting the best mental tools" -margin-maximization selects against businesses optimizing for intelligence.
  • serjester 8mo ago
    The vast majority of people don't need smarter models and aren't willing to pay for a subscription. There's an argument to be made that ads on free users will subsidize the power users that demand frontier intelligence - done well this could increase OpenAI's revenue by an order of magnitude. This is going to be tough to compete against - Anthropic would need to go stratospheric with their (low margin) enterprise revenue.
• jstummbillig 8mo ago
  I appreciate taking a stance, even if nobody is asking. It would be great if it was less of a bad faith effort. It's great that Anthropic is targeting the businesses of the world. It's a little insincere to than declare "no ads", as if that decision would obviously be the same if the bulk of their (not paying) users. There are, as far as ads go, perfectly fine opportunities to do them in a limited way for limited things within chatbots. I don't know who they think they are helping by highlighting how to do it poorly.
• erelong 8mo ago
  Don't understand why more companies don't just make ads opt-in as a trade for more features A lot of people are ok with ad supported free tiers (Also is it possible to do ads in a privacy respecting way or do people just object to ads across the board?)
  • derektank 8mo ago
    I would object to ads across the board in this case (though I’m generally fine with even targeted ads). It would create a customer-client relationship between companies paying to advertise and the AI company, creating an incentive for Anthropic to manipulate the Claude service on their behalf. As an end user that seeks input from Claude on purchasing decisions, I do not want there to be any question as to whether or not it was subtly manipulated.
• waldopat 8mo ago
  I feel like they are picking a lane. ChatGPT is great for chatbots and the like, but, as was discussed in a prior thread, chatbots aren't the end-all-be-all of AI or LLMs. Claude Code is the workhorse for me and most folks I know for AI assisted development and business automation type tasks. Meanwhile, most folks I know who use ChatGPT are really replacing Google Search. This is where folks are trying to create llm.txt files to become more discoverable by ChatGPT specifically. You can see the very different response by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/ https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-exp.... ChatGPT is saying they will mark ads as ads and keep answers "independent," but that is not measurable. So we'll see. For Anthropic to be proactive in saying they will not pursue ad based revenue I think is not just "one of the good guys" but that they may be stabilizing on a business model of both seat and usage based subscriptions. Either way, both companies are hemorrhaging money.
  • johnsimer 8mo ago
    Both companies are making bank on inference
    • ehsanu1 8mo ago
      Could you substantiate that? That take into account training and staffing costs?
      • ihsw 8mo ago
        The parent specifically said inference, which does not include training and staffing costs.
        • ehsanu1 8mo ago
          But those aren't things you can really separate for proprietary models. Keeping inference running also requires staff, not just for the R&D.
    • lysace 8mo ago
• catigula 8mo ago
  Does the veneer of goodness despite (alleged) cutthroat business practices from Anthropic bother anyone else?
• smusamashah 8mo ago
  Claude have posted on number of very sarcastic videos on twitter that take a jibe at ads https://x.com/claudeai/status/2019071118036942999 https://x.com/claudeai/status/2019071118036942999 with an ending line "Ads are coming to IA. But not to Claude."
• big_toast 8mo ago
  I asked for this last week in an hn comment and people were pretty negative about it in the replies. But I’m happy with position and will cancel my ChatGPT and push my family towards Claude for most things. This taste effect is what I think pushes apple devices into households. Power users making endorsements. And I think that excess margin is enough to get past lowered ad revenue opportunity.
• javier_e06 8mo ago
  They are not trying to sell adds. They are trying to sell themselves as a monthly service. That is what I think when they are trying to convince me to go there to think. I rather go think at Wikipedia.
  • nerdsniper 8mo ago
    It’s so hard to succeed without selling ads. There’s an exponential growth aspect to these endeavors and ads add a lot of revenue, which investors like, so those who don’t can find that the lost revenue “multiplies” due to lower outside investment, lower stock price growth, etc. I wish the financial aspects were different, because Anthropic is absolutely correct about ads being antithetical to a good user experience.
    • crthpl 8mo ago
      Anthropic is very big (the biggest AI co?) in B2B, where you don't have ads. Also, if they end up creating a datacenter full of geniuses, ads won't make sense either.
      • nerdsniper 8mo ago
        B2B will be hard to compete with vs Google and MSFT, as they can bundle services with Office365 or Google Workspace.
  • conductr 8mo ago
    Idk, brainstorming and ideating is my main use case for AI I use it as codegen too but I easily have 20x more brainstorming conversations than code projects Most non-tech people I talk to are finding value with it with traditional things. The main one I've seen flourish is travel planning. Like, booking became super easy but full itinerary planning for a trip (hotels, restaurants, day trips/activities, etc) has been largely a manual thing that I see a lot of non-tech people using llms for. It's very good for open ended plans too, which the travel sites have been horrible at. For instance, "I want to plan a trip to somewhere warm and beachy I don't care about the dates or exactly where" maybe I care about the budget up front but most things I'm flexible on - those kinds of things work well as a conversation.
• seydor 8mo ago
  They made an ad to say that they won't have ads, i dont know if they are aware of the irony. https://x.com/ns123abc/status/2019074628191142065 https://x.com/ns123abc/status/2019074628191142065 In any case, they draw undue attention to openAI rather than themselves. Not good advertising Both openAI and Anthropic should start selling compute devices instead. There is nothing stoping open-source LLMs from eating their lunch mid-term
  • bananaflag 8mo ago
    Ads as a concept are not evil. There have been ads since prehistory. Littering a potentially quality product with ads which one cannot easily separate is what the evil is.
    • dmbche 8mo ago
      What an awful take
      • bananaflag 8mo ago
        Why? Give me the awesome take
        • dmbche 8mo ago
          Non factual or interesting. No - ask an LLM I'm sure you'll be interested
  • apt-apt-apt-apt 8mo ago
    Why is it ironic? It would seem to be ironic if they put ads in their models to say they won't put ads.
• kaffekaka 8mo ago
  Sure, ad free forever, until it is not. Great by Anthropic, but I put basically no long term trust in statements like this.
• cm2012 8mo ago
  Claude focuses on enterprise and B2B rather than mass consumer, so it makes sense for them.
• titzer 8mo ago
  > There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them. > ...but including ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking. Sadly, with my disillusionment with the tech industry, plus the trend of the past 20 years, this smacks of Larry Page's early statements about how bad advertising could distort search results and Google would never do that. Unsurprisingly, I am not able to find the exact quote with Google.
  • Trufa 8mo ago
    Yeah, it’s a shame we’ve all grown so jarred, I do see this better than nothing. In this animal farm Orwellian cycle we’ve been going through, at least they start here, unlike others. I for one commend this, but stay vigilant.
• dbgrman 8mo ago
  100%. Love this approach by Anthropic. The Meta "monetization league" is assembling at OpenAI and doing what they've done best at Meta. However, I do think we need to take Anthropic's word with a grain of salt, too. To say they're fully working in the user's interest has yet to be proven. This trust would require a lot of effort to be earned. Once the companies intends to or becomes public, incentives change, investors expect money and throwing your users under the bus is a tried and tested way of increasing shareholder value.
• ptx 8mo ago
  So they have "made a choice" to keep Claude ad-free, they say. "Today [...] Claude’s only incentive is to give a helpful answer", they say. But there's nothing that suggests that they can't make a different choice tomorrow, or whenever it suits them. It's not profitable to betray your trust too early.
  • jhickok 8mo ago
    I can't really imagine any statement they could give that would ease concerns that at some point in time they change their mind. But for now, it is a relief to read, even if this is a bit of marketing. The longer it goes without being enshittified the better.
    • Nition 8mo ago
      They could agree to some actual significant negative consequence to running ads. e.g. They could put a clause in the subscription signup process that says if they ever run ads - even if it's only for free accounts - then you get all of the money you've spent back. Of course I realise they would never do something like that. Buy why not? Well, because they might decide they want to run ads...
• Imnimo 8mo ago
  >An advertising-based business model would introduce incentives that could work against this principle. I agree with this - I'm not so much worried that ChatGPT is going to silently insert advertising copy into model answers. I'm worried that advertising alongside answers creates bad incentives that then drive future model development. We saw Google Search go down this path.
• nasorenga 8mo ago
  It's nice that they don't show ads in conversations with Claude - but I wonder if they collect profiling information from my prompts and activities to sell to advertising firms.
• falloutx 8mo ago
  Claude is the last place where thinking happens.
• MagicMoonlight 8mo ago
  That’s positive. How is Claude? Is it censorship heavy?
  • derektank 8mo ago
    If you broach subjects Anthropic considers sensitive (cyber security, dangerous biotech, etc) Claude is very likely to shut you down completely and refuse to answer. As someone that works in cybersecurity and uses Claude daily, it is annoying to ask a question regarding some feature of Cobalt Strike and have it refuse to answer, even though the tool’s documentation is public. I would have cancelled my ChatGPT subscription at this point if once or twice a month I didn’t need to ask it to look up something when Claude refuses.
    • golem14 8mo ago
      How are the Chinese models in this regard? Qwen3 for instance?
• tolerance 8mo ago
  Anthropic probably saw how much money they made off of the Moltbot hype and figured that they don’t need ad revenue. They can go a step further and build a marketplace for similar setups, paying the developers who make them in micro transactions per tokens.
• yakkomajuri 8mo ago
  RemindMe! 2 years
• s3p 8mo ago
  Good on Anthropic! I appreciate how deliberate they are on maintaining user trust. Have preferred Claude's responses more through the API, so I don't imagine this would have affected me as much but it is still nice to see.
• sdellis 8mo ago
  The key hurdle for AI to leap is establishing trust with users. No one trusts the big players (for good reason) and it is causing serious anxiety among the investors. It seems Claude acknowledges this and is looking to make trust a critical part of their marketing messaging by saying no ads or product placement. The problem is that serving ads is only one facet of trust. There are trust issues around privacy, intellectual property, transparency, training data, security, accuracy, and simply "being evil" that Claude's marketing doesn't acknowledge or address. Trust, on the scale they need, is going to be very hard for any of them to establish, if not impossible.
  • popalchemist 8mo ago
    Impossible. The only way to know what is happening is to have the code run on your own infra.
    • sfink 8mo ago
      That still doesn't mean much unless you're doing your own training or getting the weights from a trusted source, and neither of those mean much without knowing something about the data being trained on. If someone is trying to influence your results, running the inference on your own infrastructure prevents some attack vectors but not some of the more plausible and worrying ones.
      • popalchemist 8mo ago
        I don't think people are concerned about the models' math being biased/tainted (people know of it but that largely doesn't factor into the "security concerns" that people cite.) Typically, it's about how do we know that our data is not going to be seen by a 3rd party. That's what I'm speaking to. Running on your own infra, you can guarantee there are no phone-homes.
        • deleted 8mo ago
          [deleted]
  • 8mo ago
• deafpolygon 8mo ago
  I really want to applaud Anthropic; I remain cautiously optimistic, but I’m not certain how long they will maintain this posture. I will say that the recent announcement from OpenAI has put me off from ChatGPT — I use Gemini occasionally, because it’s the devil I know. OpenAI has gone back and forth on their positions so many times in a way that feels truly hostile to their users. Plus, I’m not a huge fan of Sam Altman.
• czk 8mo ago
  i spend most of my time with claude thinking about when my daily usage limit is going to reset
• hansmayer 8mo ago
  Since when does HN welcome blatant self-advertising posts like this one ?
• 4corners4sides 8mo ago
  This is one of those “don’t be evil” like articles that companies remove when the going gets tough but I guess we should be thankful that things are looking rosy enough for Anthropic at the moment that they would release a blog like this. The point about filtering signal vs. noise in search engines can’t really be stated enough. At this point using a search engine and the conventional internet in general is an exercise in frustration. It’s simply a user hostile place – infinite cookie banners for sites that shouldn’t collect data at all, auto play advertisements, engagement farming, sites generated by AI to shill and produce a word count. You could argue that AI exacerbates this situation but you also have to agree that it is much more pleasant to ask perplexity, ChatGPT or Claude a question than to put yourself through the torture of conventional search. Introducing ads into this would completely deprive the user of a way of navigating the web in a way that actually respects their dignity. I also agree in the sense that the current crop of AIs do feel like a space to think as opposed to a place where I am being manipulated, controlled or treated like some sheep in flock to be sheared for cash.
  • pixelready 8mo ago
    The current crop of LLM-backed chatbots do have a bit of that “old, good internet” flavor. A mostly unspoiled frontier where things are changing rapidly, potential seems unbounded, the people molding the actual tech and discussing it are enthusiasts with a sort of sorcerer’s apprentice vibe. Not sure how long it can persist, since I’ve seen this story before and we all understand the incentive structures at play. Does anyone know how if there are precedents for PBCs or B-Corp type businesses to be held accountable for betraying their stated values? Or is it just window dressing with no legal clout? Can they change to a standard corporation on a whim and ditch the non-shareholder maximization goals?
    • einpoklum 8mo ago
      No, they don't. They soak up tons of your most personal and sensitive information like a sponge, and you don't know what's done with it. In the "good old Internet", that did not happen. Also in the good old Internet, it wasn't the masses all dependent on a few central mega-corporations shaping the interaction, but a many-to-many affair, with people and organizations of different sizes running the sites where interaction took place. Ok, I know I'm describing the past with rosy glasses. After all, the Internet started as a DARPA project. But still, current reality is itself rather dystopic in many ways.
• jonathaneunice 8mo ago
  Sometimes posts like this are just value-signaling. I hear a lot of cynicism and "just you wait, the other shoe will drop" comments along those lines. But combined with the other projects Anthropic has pursued (e.g. around understanding bias and explaining "how the model is thinking as it is") and decisions it has made, I'm happy with the course they're plotting. They seem consistently upstanding, thoughtful, and respectful. I want to commend them and earnestly say: Keep up the good work!
• tines 8mo ago
  Not the point of the article, but just responding to the headline: LLMs are a space to think in the same way that watching television is a space to think. Some people may think while watching TV, maybe many of the people reading this watch TV this way, but most will not. In fact, television mostly acts as a soporific, killing intelligent thought and numbing the mind against any sort of complex cognition. Same with LLMs. They're a space to sleepily watch someone else think.
  • sfink 8mo ago
    I make them ask me questions. Forces me to think.
• CuriouslyC 8mo ago
  I have such mixed feelings about Anthropic. Opus 4.5 is legit, Claude Code has been making solid progress (but it's gonna get stomped by pi) and they've been trying to be more transparent. On the other hand, they still infra issues, they till haven't open sourced Claude Code and they're going after other harnesses that use their sub. Dario also seems to have a very paternalistic attitude that I don't like, though I don't think that will survive the market.
• wilg 8mo ago
  Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take: > What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason it’s so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely increase average revenue per user without any worries about price elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly because they’re getting a positive return on their investment, and everyone’s using it for free so you can reach the whole world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much more money coming in than anyone who doesn’t have that cycle or who has to charge users for it. https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs-ads-the-long-road-to-instagram/ https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs... > This point, more than anything else, explains why the company so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business, in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers are willing to pay — even as the cost to the user remains the same (ideally free). It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.
• wayeq 8mo ago
  !remind me in two years /s
• oriettaxx 8mo ago
  No ads in AI? cheap commitment Ads are more then obsolete Using ads in AI, today, is like printing flyers when the Internet started, (or sending email ads 30 years ago: of course Google could have promised: "we will not send spam to your gmail mailbox..." :). "Ads" aim to influence your behavior: AI is a doing much much more with no need for ads (Claude included)
• mchusma 8mo ago
  I actually do want ads. Subtle, labeled ads. For many queries in Google, I like to know who is advertising for an intent. In may cases, that is a perfect fit. I don’t want ONLY the companies who have gamed the LLM SEO market to win.
• keyle 8mo ago
  I like their models. They're powerful. But... Who do they think believe the whole "don't be evil" in 2026? We know what's around the corner. Enshitification, loss of trust, frog boiling, account restrictions and upsell, advertising, degradation of service, data sold for advertising and worse. Y'ain't kidding anyone with this stuff. You're only providing screenshots for future memes.
• eek2121 8mo ago
  I do feel like many folks here and elsewhere are missing the mark with LLMs. 1) Yes, they are absolutely useless in a consumer setting. 2) If you want to be a software developer, you absolutely need to know how to understand/interact with one, and you more than likely will need to understand things like https://continue.dev https://continue.dev. I am no longer in software development due to my body slowly (quickly) dying, however I see it all from the sidelines: 1) New tech was rushed to the front lines way too quickly by big tech. 2) Big (and small tech) rushed layoffs way too fast rather than let we devs explore the advantages vs. disadvantages. 3) Companies blame "AI" (LLMs) for layoffs. 4) Most senior devs (including myself) soundly reject AI due to the above. 5) New generation of devs uses AI tools, some struggle occurs where morons don't bother reviewing code that was written by an auto completion engine. 6) We nerds begin to understand the usefulness of LLMs for "the boring part" Not a shareholder of any company. I'm permanently disabled. Just watching this stuff from the sidelines.
• zmmmmm 8mo ago
  Let's savour this time pre-enshittification of AI. One day we will look back so fondly at it and wonder at our naivety.
• mvkel 8mo ago
  Seems short-sighted to commit to not running ads exactly like OpenAI plans to. You win in the court of public opinion for a few months, then look like a hypocrite when you're inevitably forced to run ads because your investors demand it. Sort of like how safetyism was convenient marketing until it became clear that it was revenue repellant and they quietly walked it away.
• moderation 8mo ago
  > "I'm very interested in the idea of a piece of music being a place to think," Richter explained, adding that he had written Daylight as a response to the 2003 Iraq War. [0] 0. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/796801746/max-richter-tiny-desk-concert https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/796801746/max-richter-tiny-de...
• err4nt 8mo ago
  They'll shout this message right until the day they change course. Then who will hold them to account?
• trenchgun 8mo ago
  You need a mind mapping tool there
• fogzen 8mo ago
  Get back to us when you’re profitable.
• kaizenb 8mo ago
  Absolutely! (: Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude. Recent advertising campaigns from Anthropic. Violation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA Betrayal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBSam25u8O4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBSam25u8O4 Deception https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De-_wQpKw0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De-_wQpKw0s Treachery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVD3aG_azw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVD3aG_azw
  • bigyabai 8mo ago
    "Think Different" also used to mean something, before Tim Cook cozied up to authoritarianism. Who knows, it's never too late for Anthropic to have a change of heart.
    • kaizenb 8mo ago
      One can only hope.
• darthvaden 8mo ago
  [flagged]
• darthvaden 8mo ago
  [flagged]
• toyetic 8mo ago
  I'm only 25 and grew up in a post "don't be evil" world so maybe I'm jaded, but it always seems strange to me when companies try to make any moral stand about anything. Presumably if there was something a company could do to make more money they'd do it regardless of the ethical standing behind it b/c 1. The people running the company aren't stupid and want to make more money 2. The company is beholden to investors to make more money both practically and legally IMO this means the only reason anthropic isn't adding ads is b/c they make more money posturing as the "good guys". As soon as that's no longer true not only are the people in charge going to do it, but there's probably some legal standing that would obligate/compel them to do so
  • simonsarris 8mo ago
    A company is just a group of people. Anything a group of people can believe, a company can believe. A company with investors is a little more suspect, its true. But even massive public companies like Costco still stake out some claims with values beyond the economic and then pursue them. It's not an impossibility. I also think, despite dropping the motto, that Google did not in fact ever become anything close to evil. I think people are being somewhat unfair (and hyperbolic at best) by claiming otherwise.
    • AtlasBarfed 8mo ago
      Google is a massive population monitoring and propaganda machine. With AI and an authoritarian government they are an existential threat to humanity.
  • bagacrap 8mo ago
    Does it matter if they are truly moral or truly cynical but think they can capture some sort of "morality premium" by taking a stance? Yes they are beholden to investors. But so is Musk. The thing is that his investors are also his fans, so a majority of them will approve whatever tactics or schemes he comes up with. Anthropic may be able to cultivate investors in a similar way, without even trying. After all, why would you invest in a company if you didn't agree with how it was run? Of course there could be a hostile takeover by private equity group who thinks they can squeeze more value out of the tech, but that is harder the larger the company grows. Edit: also, the morality premium is usually enjoyed more in terms of employees than investors. Google for a long time attracted idealists, by which I mean they were able to pay slightly below market rate for a certain kind of person. If you have a moral compass and you get an equal offer from oai and anthropic right now, which one you choosing?
• NoPicklez 8mo ago
  It's one of those marketing stunts where they take a dig at another company, then a year or so later find themselves doing the same thing. Think of the Samsung headphone jack commercial.