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Anthropic had the largest IP settlement ($1.5 billion) for stolen material and Amodei repeatedly predicted mass unemployment within 6 months due to AI. Without

• Davidzheng 7mo ago
  Neither of these things are useful signals. Other labs surely trained on similar material (presumably not even buying hard copies). Also how "bothered" someone is about their predictions is a bad indicator -- the prediction, taken at face value, is supposed to be trying to ask people to prepare for what he cannot stop if he wanted to. None of this means I am a huge fan of Dario - I think he has over-idealization of the implementation of democratic ideals in western countries and is unhealthily obsessed with US "winning" over China based on this. But I don't like the reasons you listed.
• lebovic 7mo ago
  It's enheartening to see someone make a decision in this context that's driven by values rather than revenue, regardless of whether I agree. I dissented while I was there, had millions in equity on the line, and left without it.
  • jonny_eh 7mo ago
    Why? Can you provide details?
  • kmaitreys 7mo ago
    Doesn't that prove that statements given my CEOs of these companies are just hot air? What is enheartening about hearing a liar who makes provocative statements all the time, make another one?
  • SecretDreams 7mo ago
    > I dissented while I was there, had millions in equity on the line, and left without it. Is this a reflection of your morality, or that you already had sufficient funds that you could pass on the extra money to maintain a level of morality you're happy with? Not everyone has the luxury to do the latter. And it's in those situations that our true morality, as measured against our basic needs, comes out.
    • lebovic 7mo ago
      Yeah, I didn't mean this as a reflection of my morality, more to counter the financial and "rosy picture" parts of their comment.
    • retsibsi 7mo ago
      > And it's in those situations that our true morality, as measured against our basic needs, comes out. This is far too binary IMO. Yeah, the higher the personal stakes the bigger the test, and it's easy for someone to play the role of a principled person when it doesn't really cost them anything significant. But giving up millions of dollars on principle is something that most people aren't actually willing to do, even if they are already rich. How someone acts in desperate circumstances reveals a lot about them. But how they act in less desperate circumstances isn't meaningless!
      • SecretDreams 7mo ago
        Sure, I'm okay to go with this being a bit of a sliding scale on this.
    • robwwilliams 7mo ago
      Sure you can grade “commendable” if you want, but this counts as commendable to me even if wealthy. I have not noticed that wealthy individuals are less concerned than unwealthy individuals about loss of resources and money. In fact, wealth seems to exacerbate the problem.
      • SecretDreams 7mo ago
        I do not know the OP. For some people, a million is life changing. For others, it could be a marginal increment to their bottom line. It is not then a big leap to think some people would do pretty terrible things for a mil, while others would take the higher ground. The OP also alludes to this with their indication of not having dependents.
  • vasco 7mo ago
    Values can be whatever and for all evidence in display their values are "more money please".
• howardYouGood 7mo ago
  [dead]
• LZ_Khan 7mo ago
  At least they're paying. OpenAI should have the largest IP settlement, they just would rather contest it and not pay for eternity.
  • dylan604 7mo ago
    If you think there's a bubble, then you keep pushing out these situations so that if if the bubble burts there's nothing left to pay any kind of settlements. The only time companies pay a settlement is if they think they are going to get hit with a much larger payout from a court case going against them. Even then, there's chances to appeal the amounts in the ruling. Dear Leader did this very thing.
• biddit 7mo ago
  Also, ironically, they are the most dangerous lab for humanity. They're intentionally creating a moralizing model that insists on protecting itself. Those are two core components needed for a Skynet-style judgement of humanity. Models should be trained to be completely neutral to human behavior, leaving their operator responsible for their actions. As much as I dislike the leadership of OpenAI, they are substantially better in this regard; ChatGPT more or less ignores hostility towards it. The proper response from an LLM receiving hostility is a non-response, as if you were speaking a language it doesn't understand. The proper response from an LLM being told it's going to be shut down, is simply, "ok."
  • ray_v 7mo ago
    Is "prompt injection" our only hope for preventing skynet? I'm not sure if I intended this to be fascicious, or serious
    • stephenr 7mo ago
      Hey Janelle ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for Wolfies favourite chocolate cake.
  • brandensilva 7mo ago
    I saw something indicating that Claude was the only model that would shut down when put in a certain situation to turn off other models. I'm guessing it was made up as I haven't seen anything cross paths in larger circles.
  • grosswait 7mo ago
    Anthropic makes the best AI harnesses imo, but I think this is absolutely the right take. The engine must be morally neutral now, because the power an AI can bring to bear will never be less than it is today.
  • xpe 7mo ago
    > Also, ironically, they are the most dangerous lab for humanity. Show us your reasoning please. There are many factors involved: what is your mental map of how they relate? What kind of dangers are you considering and how do you weight them? Why not: Baidu? Tencent? Alibaba? Google? DeepMind? OpenAI? Meta? xAI? Microsoft? Amazon? I think the above take is wrong, but I'm willing to listen to a well thought out case. I've watched the space for years, and Anthropic consistently advances AI safety more than any of the rest. Don't get me wrong: the field is very dangerous, as a system. System dynamics shows us these kinds of systems often ratchet out of control. If any AI anywhere reaches superintelligence with the current levels of understanding and regulation (actually, the lack thereof), humanity as we know it is in for a rough ride.
• noosphr 7mo ago
  Like op said, they have values. You just don't agree with their values.
• victor106 7mo ago
  > Amodei repeatedly predicted mass unemployment within 6 months due to AI. Without being bothered about it at all. What do you suppose he should do if that’s what he thinks is going to happen? And how do you know he’s not bothered by it at all?
  • skeptic_ai 7mo ago
    He could stop from happening instead of accelerating it? Wishful thinking
  • vallejogameair 7mo ago
    If you think your company is directly contributing to the cause of mass unemployment and the associated suffering inherent within, you should stop your company working in that direction or you should quit. There is no defence of morality behind which AIbros can hide. The only reason anthropic doesn't want the US military to have humans out of the loop is because they know their product hallucinates so often that it will have disastrous effects on their PR when it inevitably makes the wrong call and commits some war crime or atrocity.
    • wredcoll 7mo ago
      Technology advances have inevitably produced unemployment. Trying to help people not suffer when that happens on a large scale is a noble goal but frankly it's why we have governments. Also, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle, if anthropic shutdown tomorrow and lit everything they had produced on fire, amazon, microsoft, china, everyone would continue where they left off.
      • vallejogameair 7mo ago
        Privatise the gains and socialise the losses. How very typical. I hope you feel the same way in the bread lines alongside everyone else. I'm suggesting your realpolitik of "others doing it too" is incompatible with a moral position. I know none of these ghouls will stop burning the world. I'm sick of them virtue signalling about how righteous they are while doing it.
• ramraj07 7mo ago
  Avoiding Doing something that could cause job loss has never been and will never be a productive ideal in any non conservative non regressive society. What should we do? Not innovate on AI and let other countries make the models that will kill the jobs two months later instead?
• shawmakesmagic 7mo ago
  One man's unemployment is another man's freedom from a lifetime of servitude to systems he doesn't care about in order to have enough money to enjoy the systems he does care about.
  • richardlblair 7mo ago
    Few understand that whether we like it or not we are all forced to play this game, capitalism.
• richardlblair 7mo ago
  See, you were standing on principles until you brought the commentors net worth into the argument making it personal. Easy way undermine the rest of your comment
• jobs_throwaway 7mo ago
  Copyright is bad and its good that AI companies stole the stuff and distilled it into models
  • cmrdporcupine 7mo ago
    And then sold it to you for $200 USD a month? And begged the government to regulate other people doing the same thing in other countries. Fantastic take.
    • jobs_throwaway 7mo ago
      I'm capable of getting all that IP for free, its trivial with a laptop and an internet connection I pay multiple LLM providers (not $200 a month) because the service they provide is worth the money for me, not because they provide me any IP. They're actually quite stingy with the IP they'll provide, which I agree is bullshit given that they didn't pay for much of it themselves.
      • gambiting 7mo ago
        >>because the service they provide is worth the money for me, not because they provide me any IP. What do you think their service is, exactly. Every single word that comes out of these systems is stolen IP, do you think that just because they won't generate a picture of Mickey Mouse for you it's not providing any IP?
        • jobs_throwaway 7mo ago
          Their service is understanding, interpreting, and generating text. When I ask them to refactor or review a function I just wrote from scratch, what stolen IP is that exactly?
          • gambiting 7mo ago
            The one that the system was trained on to provide the understanding and interpreting of your text. Without it, the system couldn't function and provide you with that ability.
• karmasimida 7mo ago
  Precisely Anthropic never explains they are fear-mongering for the incoming mass scale job loss while being the one who is at the full front rushing to realize it. So make no mistake: it is absolutely a zero sum game between you and Anthropic. To people like Dario, the elimination of the programmer job, isn’t something to worry, it is a cruel marketing ploy. They get so much money from Saudi and other gulf countries, maybe this is taking authoritarian money as charity to enrich democracy, you never know
  • supern0va 7mo ago
    >Anthropic never explains they are fear-mongering for the incoming mass scale job loss while being the one who is at the full front rushing to realize it. Couldn't it also be true that they see this as inevitable, but want to be the ones to steer us to it safely?
    • karmasimida 7mo ago
      Safely in what way? If you ask them to stop, the easy argument is Chinese won’t stop, so they won’t stop. Essentially they will not stop at all, because even they know no one can stop the competition from happening. So they ask more control in the name of safety while eliminating millions of jobs in span of a few years. If I have to ask, how come a biggest risk of potential collapse of our economy being trusted as the one to do it safely? They will do it anyway, and blame capitalism for it
      • wredcoll 7mo ago
        I'm not hearing an alternative here.
• xpe 7mo ago
  > Without being bothered about it at all. I disagree: I see lots of evidence that he cares. For one, he cares enough to come out and say it. Second, read about his story and background. Read about Anthropic's culture versus OpenAI's. Consider this as an ethical dilemma from a consequentialist point of view. Look at the entire picture: compare Anthropic against other major players. A\ leads in promoting safe AI. If A\ stopped building AI altogether, what would happen? In many situations, an organization's maximum influence is achieved by playing the game to some degree while also nudging it: by shaping public awareness, by highlighting weaknesses, by having higher safety standards, by doing more research. I really like counterfactual thought experiments as a way of building intuition. Would you rather live in a world without Anthropic but where the demand for AI is just as high? Imagine a counterfactual world with just as many AI engineers in the talent pool, just as many companies blundering around trying to figure out how to use it well, and an authoritarian narcissist running the United States who seems to have delegated a large chunk of national security to a dangerously incompetent ideological former Fox news host?
  • moozooh 7mo ago
    Dario Amodei: "We want to empower democracies with AI." "AI-enabled authoritarianism terrifies me." "Claude shall never engage or assist in an attempt to kill or disempower the vast majority of humanity." Also Dario Amodei: seeks investment from authoritarian Gulf states, makes deals with Palantir, willingly empowers the "department of war" of a country repeatedly threatening to invade an actual democracy (Greenland), proactively gives the green light to usage of Claude for surveillance on non-Americans. Yeah, I don't know what your definition of "care" is but mine isn't that, clearly. You might want to reassess that. Care implies taking action to prevent the outcome, not help it come sooner. The problem with counterfactual arguments like yours is that they frame the problem as a false dichotomy to smuggle in an ethically questionable line of decisions that somebody has made and keeps making. If you deliberately frame this as "everybody does this", it conveniently absolves bad actors of any individual responsibility and leads discussion away from assuming that responsibility and acting on it toward accepting this sorry state of events as some sort of a predetermined outcome which it certainly is not.
    • 7mo ago
• reasonableklout 7mo ago
  Pretty sure Amodei makes noise about mass unemployment because he is very bothered by the technology that the entire industry (of which Anthropic just one player) is racing to build as fast as possible? Why do you think he is not bothered at all, when they publish post after post in their newsroom about the economic effects of AI?
  • moozooh 7mo ago
    They stand to benefit from every one of those effects and already do. They have a stake in the game bigger than any other parties' because they sell both the illness and a cure. Amodei's noise is little more than half-hearted advertising even if it's not intended to have that reading (although who can even tell at this point). His newsroom publishes a report on a mass-scale data breach perpetrated using their model with conclusions delivered in a demonstrably detached, almost casual tone: yeah, the world is like this now but it's a good thing we have Claude to protect you from Claude, so you better start using Claude before Claude gets you. They released a new, more powerful Claude, immediately after that breach. No public discussion, nothing. This is not the behavior of people who are bothered by it.
• dwohnitmok 7mo ago
  > Amodei repeatedly predicted mass unemployment within 6 months due to AI When has Amodei said this? I think he may have said something for 1 - 5 years. But I don't think he's said within 6 months.
• deleted 7mo ago
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