4 ms·

Being the 'good guy' is just marketing. It's like a unique selling point for them. Even their name alludes to it. They will only keep it up as long as it benefi

Being the 'good guy' is just marketing. It's like a unique selling point for them. Even their name alludes to it. They will only keep it up as long as it benefits them. Just look at the comments from their CEO about taking Saudi money. Not that I've got some sort of hate for Anthropic. Claude has been my tool of choice for a while, but I trust them about as much as I trust OpenAI.

libraryofbabel 8mo ago
I mean, yes and. Companies may do things for broadly marketing reasons, but that can have positive consequences for users and companies can make committed decisions that don't just optimize for short term benefits like revenue or share price. For example, Apple's commitment to user privacy is "just marketing" in a sense, but it does benefit users and they do sacrifice sources of revenue for it and even get into conflicts with governments over the issue. And company execs can hold strong principles and act to push companies in a certain direction because of them, although they are always acting within a set of constraints and conflicting incentives in the corporate environment and maybe not able to impose their direction as far as they would like. Anthropic's CEO in particular seems unusually thoughtful and principled by the standards of tech companies, although of course as you say even he may be pushed to take money from unsavory sources. Basically it's complicated. 'Good guys' and 'bad guys' are for Marvel movies. We live in a messy world and nobody is pure and independent once they are enmeshed within a corporate structure (or really, any strong social structure). I think we all know this, I'm not saying you don't! But it's useful to spell it out. And I agree with you that we shouldn't really trust any corporations. Incentives shift. Leadership changes. Companies get acquired. Look out for yourself and try not to tie yourself too closely to anyone's product or ecosystem if it's not open source.
- bigyabai 8mo ago
  > and even get into conflicts with governments over the issue. To be fair, they also cooperate with the US government for immoral dragnet surveillance[0], and regularly assent to censorship (VPN bans, removed emojis, etc.) abroad. It's in both Apple and most governments' best interests to appear like mortal enemies, but cooperate for financial and domestic security purposes. Which for all intents and purposes, it seems they do. Two weeks after the San Bernardino kerfuffle, the iPhone in question was cracked and both parties got to walk away conveniently vindicated of suspicion. I don't think this is a moral failing of anyone, it's just the obvious incentives of Apple's relationship with their domestic fed. Nobody holds Apple's morality accountable, and I bet they're quite grateful for that. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
yoyohello13 8mo ago
At the end of the day, the choices in companies we interact with is pretty limited. I much prefer to interact with a company that at least pays lip service to being 'good' as opposed to a company that is actively just plain evil and ok with it. That's the main reason I stick with iOS. At least Apple talks about caring about privacy. Google/Android doesn't even bother to talk about it.
- astrange 8mo ago
  That's probably not true - government regulators require a lot of privacy work and Android certainly complies with that. Legal compliance is a large business strategy because small companies can't afford to do it.
JohnnyMarcone 8mo ago
How do you parse the difference between marketing and having values? I have difficulty with that and I would love to understand how people can be confident one way or the other. In many instances, the marketing becomes so disconnected from actions that it's obvious. That hasn't happen with Anthropic for me.
- advisedwang 8mo ago
  Companies, not begin sentient, don't have values, only their leaders/employees do. The question then becomes "when are the humans free to implement their values in their work, and when aren't they". You need to inspecting ownership structure, size, corporate charter and so on, and realize that it varies with time and situation. Anthropic being a PBC probably helps.
  - hungryhobbit 8mo ago
    >Companies, not begin sentient, don't have values, only their leaders/employees do Isn't that a distinction without a difference? Every real world company has employees, and those people do have values (well, except the psychopaths).
    - Lanzaa 8mo ago
      I think there are two key imperatives that lead to company "psychopathy". The first imperative is a company must survive past its employees. A company is an explicit legal structure designed to survive past the initial people in the company. A company is _not_ the employees, it is what survives past the employees' employment. The second imperative is the diffusion of responsibility. A company becomes the responsible party for actions taken, not individual employees. This is part of the reason we allow companies to survive past employees, because their obligations survive as well. This leads to individual employees taking actions for the company against their own moral code for the good of the company. See also The Corporation (2003 film) and Meditations On Moloch (2014)[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
    - 8mo ago
qudat 8mo ago
Agreed. Companies don’t have the capacity to be moral entities. They are driven purely based on monetary incentives. They are mechanical machinery. People are anthropomorphizing values onto companies or being duped by marketing speak.
zombot 8mo ago
> but I trust them about as much as I trust OpenAI. So, ideally, not at all?
rhubarbtree 8mo ago
What evidence do you have for that? Your point about Saudi is literally mentioned by the parent as one of the few negative points. I’m not saying this is how it will play out, but this reads as lazy cynicism - which is a self-realising attitude and something I really don’t admire about our nerd culture. We should be aiming higher.
- netdur 8mo ago
  While there is nothing wrong about Saudi money, they are spreading FUD about open weights and wants to regulate and control how the LLM is used
  - rhubarbtree 8mo ago
    Regulation is not always bad. What’s the FUD you refer to?

libraryofbabel 8mo ago

I mean, yes and. Companies may do things for broadly marketing reasons, but that can have positive consequences for users and companies can make committed decisions that don't just optimize for short term benefits like revenue or share price. For example, Apple's commitment to user privacy is "just marketing" in a sense, but it does benefit users and they do sacrifice sources of revenue for it and even get into conflicts with governments over the issue. And company execs can hold strong principles and act to push companies in a certain direction because of them, although they are always acting within a set of constraints and conflicting incentives in the corporate environment and maybe not able to impose their direction as far as they would like. Anthropic's CEO in particular seems unusually thoughtful and principled by the standards of tech companies, although of course as you say even he may be pushed to take money from unsavory sources. Basically it's complicated. 'Good guys' and 'bad guys' are for Marvel movies. We live in a messy world and nobody is pure and independent once they are enmeshed within a corporate structure (or really, any strong social structure). I think we all know this, I'm not saying you don't! But it's useful to spell it out. And I agree with you that we shouldn't really trust any corporations. Incentives shift. Leadership changes. Companies get acquired. Look out for yourself and try not to tie yourself too closely to anyone's product or ecosystem if it's not open source.

bigyabai 8mo ago
> and even get into conflicts with governments over the issue. To be fair, they also cooperate with the US government for immoral dragnet surveillance[0], and regularly assent to censorship (VPN bans, removed emojis, etc.) abroad. It's in both Apple and most governments' best interests to appear like mortal enemies, but cooperate for financial and domestic security purposes. Which for all intents and purposes, it seems they do. Two weeks after the San Bernardino kerfuffle, the iPhone in question was cracked and both parties got to walk away conveniently vindicated of suspicion. I don't think this is a moral failing of anyone, it's just the obvious incentives of Apple's relationship with their domestic fed. Nobody holds Apple's morality accountable, and I bet they're quite grateful for that. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

yoyohello13 8mo ago

At the end of the day, the choices in companies we interact with is pretty limited. I much prefer to interact with a company that at least pays lip service to being 'good' as opposed to a company that is actively just plain evil and ok with it. That's the main reason I stick with iOS. At least Apple talks about caring about privacy. Google/Android doesn't even bother to talk about it.

astrange 8mo ago
That's probably not true - government regulators require a lot of privacy work and Android certainly complies with that. Legal compliance is a large business strategy because small companies can't afford to do it.

JohnnyMarcone 8mo ago

How do you parse the difference between marketing and having values? I have difficulty with that and I would love to understand how people can be confident one way or the other. In many instances, the marketing becomes so disconnected from actions that it's obvious. That hasn't happen with Anthropic for me.

advisedwang 8mo ago
Companies, not begin sentient, don't have values, only their leaders/employees do. The question then becomes "when are the humans free to implement their values in their work, and when aren't they". You need to inspecting ownership structure, size, corporate charter and so on, and realize that it varies with time and situation. Anthropic being a PBC probably helps.
- hungryhobbit 8mo ago
  >Companies, not begin sentient, don't have values, only their leaders/employees do Isn't that a distinction without a difference? Every real world company has employees, and those people do have values (well, except the psychopaths).
  - Lanzaa 8mo ago
    I think there are two key imperatives that lead to company "psychopathy". The first imperative is a company must survive past its employees. A company is an explicit legal structure designed to survive past the initial people in the company. A company is _not_ the employees, it is what survives past the employees' employment. The second imperative is the diffusion of responsibility. A company becomes the responsible party for actions taken, not individual employees. This is part of the reason we allow companies to survive past employees, because their obligations survive as well. This leads to individual employees taking actions for the company against their own moral code for the good of the company. See also The Corporation (2003 film) and Meditations On Moloch (2014)[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - 8mo ago

qudat 8mo ago

Agreed. Companies don’t have the capacity to be moral entities. They are driven purely based on monetary incentives. They are mechanical machinery. People are anthropomorphizing values onto companies or being duped by marketing speak.

zombot 8mo ago

> but I trust them about as much as I trust OpenAI. So, ideally, not at all?

rhubarbtree 8mo ago

What evidence do you have for that? Your point about Saudi is literally mentioned by the parent as one of the few negative points. I’m not saying this is how it will play out, but this reads as lazy cynicism - which is a self-realising attitude and something I really don’t admire about our nerd culture. We should be aiming higher.

netdur 8mo ago
While there is nothing wrong about Saudi money, they are spreading FUD about open weights and wants to regulate and control how the LLM is used
- rhubarbtree 8mo ago
  Regulation is not always bad. What’s the FUD you refer to?