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It's messed up that Anthropic simultaneously claims to be a public benefit copro and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity
by pizlonator 7mo ago
It's messed up that Anthropic simultaneously claims to be a public benefit copro and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity capabilities. It means that the economic benefit is going to the existing industry heavyweights.
(And no, the Linux Foundation being in the list doesn't imply broad benefit to OSS. Linux Foundation has an agenda and will pick who benefits according to what is good for them.)
I think it would be net better for the public if they just made Mythos available to everyone.
- titzer 7mo agoIn the long term, you're right, but in the short term, it's going to be a bloodbath.
- Aperocky 7mo agoThat's assuming the model is actually as good as they say it is. Given the amount of AI researchers over the past 3 years claiming supernatural capability from the LLM they have built, my bayesian skepticism is through the roof.
- baq 7mo agodon't confuse bayesian skepticism with plain old contrarian bias. a true bayesian updates their priors, I'd say this is an appropriate time to do so. also don't confuse what they sell with what they have internally.
- Aperocky 7mo agoThere haven't been any priors to update so far. All LLMs got better for sure, but they are still definitively LLM and did not show any sign of having purpose. Which also made sense, because their very nature as statistical machines. Sometimes quantity by itself lead to transformative change... but once, not twice, and that has already happened.
- SubiculumCode 7mo agoAnthropic has behaved the least like this of the AI companies.
- Gigachad 7mo agoThey made a claim that 100% of code would be AI generated in a year, over a year ago.
- SpicyLemonZest 7mo agoThey were right, it's hit 100% at a number of large tech companies. (They missed their initial prediction of 90% 6 months ago, because the models then available publicly weren't capable enough.)
- hn_acc1 7mo agoPlease tell me those companies so I can find alternatives. I'm using AI every day and there's no way I would trust it do that.
- SpicyLemonZest 7mo agoThe transition is pretty complete at e.g. Google and Meta, IIUC. Definitely whoever builds the AI tools you're using every day isn't writing code by hand.
- Gigachad 7mo agoI really just don't believe it. I have not met anyone in tech who writes zero code now. The idea that no one at Google writes any code is such a huge claim it requires extraordinary evidence. Which none ever gets presented.
- SpicyLemonZest 7mo agoI'm surprised to hear that. One of us is in a bubble, and I'm genuinely not sure who. I have not met anyone in tech (including multiple people at Google) who does still write code. I've been recreationally interested in AI for a long time, which is a potential source of skew I suppose, but I do not and most people in my circles do not work on anything directly related to AI.
- dragonelite 7mo agoQueue in the "First time" meme.
- cedws 7mo agoNot only companies, they're going to be taking applications from individual researchers. No doubt that it will only be granted to only established researchers, effectively locking out graduates and those early in their career. This is bad.
- SheinhardtWigCo 7mo agoThey are not unique in this. Apple and Tesla have similar programs. More nuance is warranted here. They are trying to balance the need to enable external research with the need to protect users from arbitrary 3rd parties having special capabilities that could be used maliciously
- cedws 7mo agoI understand that, but Anthropic is doing nothing to throw those grassroots researchers a lifejacket. This is the beginning of the end for independents, if it continues on this trajectory then Anthropic gets to decide who lives and who dies. Who says they should be allowed to decide that?
- solenoid0937 7mo agoWhy should unproven college students be given access to a cyber superweapon?
- tokioyoyo 7mo agoDamned if you do, damned if you don’t. “Extremely capable model that can find exploits” has always been a fear, and the first company to release it in public will cause bloodbath. But also the first company that will prove itself.
- SheinhardtWigCo 7mo ago> picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity capabilities You could say this about coordinated disclosure of any widespread 0-day or new bug class, though
- pizlonator 7mo agoThat's a really good point! But: - Coordinated disclosure is ethically sketchy. I know why we do it, and I'm not saying we shouldn't. But it's not great. - This isn't a single disclosure. This is a new technology that dramatically increases capability. So, even if we thought that coordinated disclosure was unambiguously good, then I think we'd still need to have a new conversation about Mythos
- SheinhardtWigCo 7mo agoTotally agree, it’s an uncomfortable compromise.
- kenjackson 7mo agoSo private companies shouldn’t get to determine who they provide services to? Assuming no extremely malicious intent, I’d be fine if they said it was only going to McDonalds because the founders like Big Macs.
- pizlonator 7mo agoMcDonalds isn't a public benefit corporation.
- hector_vasquez 7mo agoReleasing the model to bad actors at the same time as the major OS, browser, and security companies would be one idea. But some might consider that "messed up" too, whatever you mean by that. But in terms of acting in the public benefit, it seems consistent to work with companies that can make significant impact on users' security. The stated goal of Project Glasswing is to "secure the world's most critical software," not to be affirmative action for every wannabe out there.
- pizlonator 7mo agoI don't trust a corpo to choose what is "most critical". That's what's messed up about it.
- thorncorona 7mo agoLet's let the California HSR committee do it instead!
- pizlonator 7mo agoI'm too much of an anarchist for that. I believe what I said: > I think it would be net better for the public if they just made Mythos available to everyone.
- lanternfish 7mo ago10 Axios's within 5 days.
- enraged_camel 7mo agoYeah, I'm unsure why the OP thinks that massive chaos would somehow be "better for the public."
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jstummbillig 7mo agoWhat? The economic benefit of system critical software not totally breaking in a few weeks goes to roughly everyone. In so far Apple/Google/MS/Linux Foundation economically benefit from being able to patch pressing critical software issues upfront (I am not even exactly sure what that is supposed to mean, it's not like anyone is going to use more or less Windows or Android if this happened any other way), that's a good thing for everyone and the economic benefits of that manifest for everyone.
- baq 7mo ago> It's messed up that Anthropic simultaneously claims to be a public benefit copro and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced cybersecurity capabilities. It means that the economic benefit is going to the existing industry heavyweights. It's messed up that the US Government simultaneously claims to be a public benefit and is also picking who gets to benefit from their newly enhanced nuclear capabilities. -- someone in 1945, probably
- pizlonator 7mo agoI mean it was messed up, which is why the other world powers raced to develop their own capabilities. And it remains messed up to this day - some countries get to be under their own nuclear umbrella, while others don't. This kind of selective distribution of superpowers doesn't lead to great outcomes
- baq 7mo agoin that case in particular it led to 80 years of relatively calm geopolitics kinetically, all things considered. I'm not sure I want to live through an AI cold war, but it sure seems I don't get to choose.
- pizlonator 7mo ago> relatively calm geopolitics kinetically Relative to what? There's this trend in history that every hundred years there's a giant blow up, lots of violence, followed by peace. It's likely that we would have had 80 years of relative calm due to that cycle even if nukes hadn't happened
- baq 7mo ago> Relative to what? to WW1 and WW2.
- pizlonator 7mo agoHistory tells us that we would have had calm after WW2 even without nukes
- hmokiguess 7mo agoWhile I agree with you, in some ways I'd argue that this is just them being transparent on what probably would inevitably already happen at the scale of these corporate overlords and modern monarchs. There will always be a more capable technology in the hands of the few who hold the power, they're just sharing that with the world more openly.
- Flere-Imsaho 7mo agoIf you're a maintainer, you can apply here: https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss ... As mentioned in the article.
- pizlonator 7mo agoSo a corpo gets to pick favorites. Great.
- lelanthran 7mo agoOr (and hear me out), they are close to an IPO and want to ensure that there is a world-ending threat around which they can cluster the biggest names, with themselves leading that group. I think I just broke my cynicism meter :-(
- cjkaminski 7mo agoYou might want to recalibrate your cynicism meter. As strange it might sound, most companies act according to their principles when the founding team is at the helm. The garbage policies tend to materialize once the company is purchased by, or merged into, another entity where the leadership doesn't care about the original aim of the organization. They just want "line go up". Also, it makes sense that OpenAI feels the pressure of getting to an IPO because of their financial structure. I don't know whether or not Anthropic operates under a similar set of influences (meaning it could be either, I just don't know.)
- SubiculumCode 7mo agoThat can simultaneously be true, but the best of bad options (if excluding destroying the model altogether). These models may prove quite dangerous. That they did this instead of selling their services to every company at a huge premium says a lot about Antheopic's culture.
- malcolmgreaves 7mo agoNot really. It’s a lot better than the anarchy of releasing it and having a bunch of bad people with money use it to break software that everyone’s lives depend on. Many technologies should be gate kept because they’re dangerous. Sometimes that’s permanent, like a nuclear weapon. Sometimes that’s temporary, like a new LLM that’s good at finding exploits. It can be released to the wider public once its potential for damage has been mitigated.
- stale2002 7mo agoBetter security is a good thing, no a bad thing, regardless of which companies are more difficult to hack. Hemming and hawing over a clear and obvious good is silly.
- oytis 7mo agoThat's just in line with their ethics. They also maintain that countries other than the US should not have SOTA AI capabilities.