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> whether the company that branded itself as the ethical AI lab actually is one FWIW I have two(!!) close friends working for Anthropic, one for nearly two yea

> whether the company that branded itself as the ethical AI lab actually is one FWIW I have two(!!) close friends working for Anthropic, one for nearly two years and one for about 4 months. Both of them tell me that this is not just marketing, that the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere, and that this was the most surprising part about joining Anthropic for them. They insist the culture is actually genuine which is practically unicorn rarity in corporate America. We have worked for FAANG so I know where they're coming from; this got me to drop my cynicism for once and I plan on interviewing with them soon. Hopefully I can answer this question for myself.

foolswisdom 7mo ago
I think cynicism is deserved just from observing Dario's remarks.
root_axis 7mo ago
Yeah, every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good... Until they find themselves working somewhere else, then suddenly they have a lot to say about the unacceptable things going on there. From the outside, I find Anthropic's hyperbolic marketing to be an indication that they are basically the same as every other bay area tech startup - more or less nice folks who are primarily concerned with money and status. That's not a condemnation, but I reject all the "do no evil" fanfare as conveniently self serving.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good This isn't remotely true in my experience. The senior folks I know at Meta, for example, pretty much concede they're ersatz drug dealers.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    It should perhaps be generalized as "employees usually match the general consensus of their peer-group". Before everyone considered Meta to be ersatz drug dealers, they'd report that they feel what everyone feels. Google was "do no evil" until they had to choose between that and making the money. The culture has to be not only professed but tested.
    - surajrmal 7mo ago
      Depending on what part of Google you work for, you can absolutely feel good about what you do. The vast majority of employees don't work on ads or adjacent areas. I've never seen another company actually care for non profit related externalities so much. People talk about it like it's the same as Haliburton or Oracle and that's not true.
      - bombcar 7mo ago
        The snide response is "of COURSE you can care about non-profit related externalities when your giant evil ad business is bringing in absolute dump loads of cash". And there's something true there; few companies are Snidely Whiplash evil (maybe the lawnmower but even that is just what it is) - and having large amounts of cash affords you options in many areas.
- solenoid0937 7mo ago
  TBH I have worked at multiple FAANG and I don't know anyone other than maybe new grads that actually drank the koolaid. Certainly most of us know we are just in it for the money, and the soul-grinding profit machine will continue to grind souls for profit regardless of what we want. So that's why it is surprising to me when my (fairly senior) grizzled ex-FAANG friends, that share the same view, start waxing poetic about Anthropic being different and genuine. I think "maybe it is" and decide to interview. IDK, I guess some part of me wants to believe that nice things can exist.
- fwipsy 7mo ago
  My model is that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI engineers who self-selected for safety-consciousness. However, it's still subject to the same problem: power corrupts. I think they are better than OpenAI but they are definitely sliding.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - kranke155 7mo ago
    Eventually something like what happened with the DOW might happen again (hope not) and the IPO will leave them beholden to shareholders. If the leadership doesn’t bend it might get replaced. It’s annoying. I think Claude is atm the best AI assistant, by far.
    - fwipsy 7mo ago
      Anthropic is a public benefit corporation. This protects them from legal pressure from shareholders. Doesn't really help with market pressure/value drift though.
      - freejazz 7mo ago
        Yeah, and that's why they got of rid of their commitment to safety so they can stay cutting edge?
  - trinsic2 7mo ago
    Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. (Im pretty sure this is a Stoic axiom).
- rapnie 7mo ago
  Indeed. The bad behavior is emergent, where most individual intentions are good. Good story, bad outcome.
hypersoar 7mo ago
[flagged]
- xvector 7mo ago
  It might stick tbh. Their PBC+LTBT structure severely limits the power of shareholders. https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust
Bolwin 7mo ago
I find it bizarre even the public image of Anthropic is seen as ethical after the Department of War debacle, in which they themselves admitted they had basically no qualms with their tech being used for war and slaughter at all except two very very thin lines, namely mass surveillance of American citizens and fully automated weaponry with their current models. It only showed they were marginally more ethical than OpenAI and XAI which isn't saying much.
- fwipsy 7mo ago
  Anthropic has two principles they're willing to stand behind, even when it costs them. That's not a lot, but OpenAI only has one principle: look out for number one.
  - freejazz 7mo ago
    Those are?
- surajrmal 7mo ago
  The idea that it's not okay to arm the military is a position of privilege. The ethical issues are around how the military chooses to use its abilities, not around giving them the tools to do their jobs. We're talking about folks who are willing to give their lives up for others. If you're not going to serve yourself you should at least be willing to help them live. This has nothing to do with whether or not you support the political uses of the military. If world war 3 breaks out and you are forced to serve, you may find yourself feeling differently.
  - ethbr1 7mo ago
    Yes and... that's a position of privilege that anyone in the position should ethically take. It's unfair to sweep provision of methods to the military under a "respect the service" catch-all justification. Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) individuals serving in the military are making sacrifices (in terms of pay, family life, personal safety) that deserve respect and (2) the military as a political institution will amorally deploy whatever capabilities it has access to, to achieve political aims. There's a reason the US stopped offensive chemical, biological warfare, and tactical nuclear device research and production -- effective capabilities will be used if they exist.
DirkH 7mo ago
I have multiple friends at Anthropic. I can second this. One thing I notice about Anthropic culture is that it is unusually kind. So much so that I worry they won't be Machiavellian enough to survive. Hope I am wrong.
- trinsic2 7mo ago
  You can still be kind and guard against idiot strong men. Do the right thing, for the right reasons always brings peace. There will always be people that take advantage of that, but if you stay in the right frame, eventually people that matter will see it. And, at the same time, thats not always the case and then I just chalk it up to divine intervention or some larger purpose I am unable to see with my limited mind.
__alexs 7mo ago
If you know even the basics of ethics then such claims are clearly nonsense. There is no stable context independent ethical behaviour. This is a great example of the dangers of motivated reasoning.
jarek-foksa 7mo ago
> the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere I wonder what Anthropic tries to achieve by spreading such blatant lies with their bot accounts. I'm definitely not buying anything from a company so morally corrupt to smear the competition while claiming to be somehow "ethical". And I'm not talking just about this thread, it's a recurring pattern on Reddit.
keybored 7mo ago
Are your friends also credited in Silicon Valley (2014)?
victorevector 7mo ago
Im curious — how do ethical and safety conscious manifest themselves there? Is it more cultural or process driven? Do you have any examples?
MichaelDickens 7mo ago
Maybe people inside the company think Anthropic behaves ethically, which says something scary about either their ethical standards or their general awareness, considering how much documented unethical behavior we've seen from Anthropic leadership.[1] [1] "Unless Its Governance Changes, Anthropic Is Untrustworthy" https://anthropic.ml/ https://anthropic.ml/
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
hollerith 7mo ago
>the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere Anthropic is emphatically not safe. None of the AI labs with customers (i.e., excluding a few small nonprofits whose revenue comes from donations) are anything like safe -- because of extinction risk. The famous positive regard that Anthropic employees have for their organization's mission means almost nothing because there have been hundreds of quite destructive cults and political parties whose members believed that theirs is the most ethical and benign organization ever. The best thing you can say about Anthropic is that if you have to support some AI lab by becoming a customer, investor or employee, it is slightly less dangerous for the world to support Anthropic than OpenAI although IMHO (and I admit I am in a minority on this among extinction-risk activists) it is slightly less dangerous to support Google Deep Mind or Mistral than Anthropic. All four organizations I mentioned should be shut down tomorrow with their assets returned to shareholders. The current crop of services provided by the leading AI labs are IMHO positive on net in their effect of people and society, but the leading AI labs are spending a large fraction of the 100s of billions of dollars they've received from investors on creating more powerful models, and they might succeed in their goal of creating models that are much more powerful than the ones they have now, which is when most of the danger would manifest. The leaders of all of the leading AI labs have the ambition of completely transforming society and the world through AI.

foolswisdom 7mo ago

I think cynicism is deserved just from observing Dario's remarks.

root_axis 7mo ago

Yeah, every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good... Until they find themselves working somewhere else, then suddenly they have a lot to say about the unacceptable things going on there. From the outside, I find Anthropic's hyperbolic marketing to be an indication that they are basically the same as every other bay area tech startup - more or less nice folks who are primarily concerned with money and status. That's not a condemnation, but I reject all the "do no evil" fanfare as conveniently self serving.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good This isn't remotely true in my experience. The senior folks I know at Meta, for example, pretty much concede they're ersatz drug dealers.
- bombcar 7mo ago
  It should perhaps be generalized as "employees usually match the general consensus of their peer-group". Before everyone considered Meta to be ersatz drug dealers, they'd report that they feel what everyone feels. Google was "do no evil" until they had to choose between that and making the money. The culture has to be not only professed but tested.
  - surajrmal 7mo ago
    Depending on what part of Google you work for, you can absolutely feel good about what you do. The vast majority of employees don't work on ads or adjacent areas. I've never seen another company actually care for non profit related externalities so much. People talk about it like it's the same as Haliburton or Oracle and that's not true.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      The snide response is "of COURSE you can care about non-profit related externalities when your giant evil ad business is bringing in absolute dump loads of cash". And there's something true there; few companies are Snidely Whiplash evil (maybe the lawnmower but even that is just what it is) - and having large amounts of cash affords you options in many areas.
solenoid0937 7mo ago
TBH I have worked at multiple FAANG and I don't know anyone other than maybe new grads that actually drank the koolaid. Certainly most of us know we are just in it for the money, and the soul-grinding profit machine will continue to grind souls for profit regardless of what we want. So that's why it is surprising to me when my (fairly senior) grizzled ex-FAANG friends, that share the same view, start waxing poetic about Anthropic being different and genuine. I think "maybe it is" and decide to interview. IDK, I guess some part of me wants to believe that nice things can exist.
fwipsy 7mo ago
My model is that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI engineers who self-selected for safety-consciousness. However, it's still subject to the same problem: power corrupts. I think they are better than OpenAI but they are definitely sliding.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- kranke155 7mo ago
  Eventually something like what happened with the DOW might happen again (hope not) and the IPO will leave them beholden to shareholders. If the leadership doesn’t bend it might get replaced. It’s annoying. I think Claude is atm the best AI assistant, by far.
  - fwipsy 7mo ago
    Anthropic is a public benefit corporation. This protects them from legal pressure from shareholders. Doesn't really help with market pressure/value drift though.
    - freejazz 7mo ago
      Yeah, and that's why they got of rid of their commitment to safety so they can stay cutting edge?
- trinsic2 7mo ago
  Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. (Im pretty sure this is a Stoic axiom).
rapnie 7mo ago
Indeed. The bad behavior is emergent, where most individual intentions are good. Good story, bad outcome.

hypersoar 7mo ago

[flagged]

xvector 7mo ago
It might stick tbh. Their PBC+LTBT structure severely limits the power of shareholders. https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust

Bolwin 7mo ago

I find it bizarre even the public image of Anthropic is seen as ethical after the Department of War debacle, in which they themselves admitted they had basically no qualms with their tech being used for war and slaughter at all except two very very thin lines, namely mass surveillance of American citizens and fully automated weaponry with their current models. It only showed they were marginally more ethical than OpenAI and XAI which isn't saying much.

fwipsy 7mo ago
Anthropic has two principles they're willing to stand behind, even when it costs them. That's not a lot, but OpenAI only has one principle: look out for number one.
- freejazz 7mo ago
  Those are?
surajrmal 7mo ago
The idea that it's not okay to arm the military is a position of privilege. The ethical issues are around how the military chooses to use its abilities, not around giving them the tools to do their jobs. We're talking about folks who are willing to give their lives up for others. If you're not going to serve yourself you should at least be willing to help them live. This has nothing to do with whether or not you support the political uses of the military. If world war 3 breaks out and you are forced to serve, you may find yourself feeling differently.
- ethbr1 7mo ago
  Yes and... that's a position of privilege that anyone in the position should ethically take. It's unfair to sweep provision of methods to the military under a "respect the service" catch-all justification. Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) individuals serving in the military are making sacrifices (in terms of pay, family life, personal safety) that deserve respect and (2) the military as a political institution will amorally deploy whatever capabilities it has access to, to achieve political aims. There's a reason the US stopped offensive chemical, biological warfare, and tactical nuclear device research and production -- effective capabilities will be used if they exist.

DirkH 7mo ago

I have multiple friends at Anthropic. I can second this. One thing I notice about Anthropic culture is that it is unusually kind. So much so that I worry they won't be Machiavellian enough to survive. Hope I am wrong.

trinsic2 7mo ago
You can still be kind and guard against idiot strong men. Do the right thing, for the right reasons always brings peace. There will always be people that take advantage of that, but if you stay in the right frame, eventually people that matter will see it. And, at the same time, thats not always the case and then I just chalk it up to divine intervention or some larger purpose I am unable to see with my limited mind.

__alexs 7mo ago

If you know even the basics of ethics then such claims are clearly nonsense. There is no stable context independent ethical behaviour. This is a great example of the dangers of motivated reasoning.

jarek-foksa 7mo ago

> the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere I wonder what Anthropic tries to achieve by spreading such blatant lies with their bot accounts. I'm definitely not buying anything from a company so morally corrupt to smear the competition while claiming to be somehow "ethical". And I'm not talking just about this thread, it's a recurring pattern on Reddit.

keybored 7mo ago

Are your friends also credited in Silicon Valley (2014)?

victorevector 7mo ago

Im curious — how do ethical and safety conscious manifest themselves there? Is it more cultural or process driven? Do you have any examples?

MichaelDickens 7mo ago

Maybe people inside the company think Anthropic behaves ethically, which says something scary about either their ethical standards or their general awareness, considering how much documented unethical behavior we've seen from Anthropic leadership.[1] [1] "Unless Its Governance Changes, Anthropic Is Untrustworthy" https://anthropic.ml/ https://anthropic.ml/

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

hollerith 7mo ago

>the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere Anthropic is emphatically not safe. None of the AI labs with customers (i.e., excluding a few small nonprofits whose revenue comes from donations) are anything like safe -- because of extinction risk. The famous positive regard that Anthropic employees have for their organization's mission means almost nothing because there have been hundreds of quite destructive cults and political parties whose members believed that theirs is the most ethical and benign organization ever. The best thing you can say about Anthropic is that if you have to support some AI lab by becoming a customer, investor or employee, it is slightly less dangerous for the world to support Anthropic than OpenAI although IMHO (and I admit I am in a minority on this among extinction-risk activists) it is slightly less dangerous to support Google Deep Mind or Mistral than Anthropic. All four organizations I mentioned should be shut down tomorrow with their assets returned to shareholders. The current crop of services provided by the leading AI labs are IMHO positive on net in their effect of people and society, but the leading AI labs are spending a large fraction of the 100s of billions of dollars they've received from investors on creating more powerful models, and they might succeed in their goal of creating models that are much more powerful than the ones they have now, which is when most of the danger would manifest. The leaders of all of the leading AI labs have the ambition of completely transforming society and the world through AI.