4 ms·

They have better PR than OpenAI but they are not a more ethical company. They do a bunch of shady stuff and are just as much involved in military applications.

They have better PR than OpenAI but they are not a more ethical company. They do a bunch of shady stuff and are just as much involved in military applications. Cal Newport’s recent podcast had a good discussion about this: https://youtu.be/BRr3pAPsQAk?si=jaRJYJ_XQE7VpxPN https://youtu.be/BRr3pAPsQAk?si=jaRJYJ_XQE7VpxPN

esperent 6mo ago
Pet peeve of mine is people saying "hey this thing is totally shady/false, I've got proof right here <links to hour long podcast>". It happens surprisingly often.
- rexpop 6mo ago
  Cal Newport and tech commentator Ed Zitron discussed this disparity between Anthropic's public image and their actual practices. Despite cultivating a reputation as the "ethical" AI company, Zitron argues that Anthropic's actions show they are just as ruthless and ethically questionable as their competitors. Anthropic has been deeply integrated with the US military, having been installed with classified access since June 2024. The podcast highlights that Claude has been actively utilized during the "Venezuela incursion" and the ongoing "war in Iran". Despite this active involvement, CEO Dario Amodei released a statement attempting to publicly distance the company from the Department of Defense by declaring they would not allow their technology to be used for "mass domestic surveillance" or "fully autonomous weapons". Zitron categorizes this as a highly calculated PR maneuver, pointing out that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of controlling autonomous weapons anyway. The stunt successfully manufactured a wave of positive press—with celebrities and commentators praising Anthropic as an ethical objector—right when the company was trying to secure an IPO or a massive ~$100 billion valuation, all while they quietly remained an active part of the war effort. Beyond their military contracts, the podcast details several highly questionable business practices Anthropic has used to artificially inflate their numbers: 1. During a lawsuit regarding their military contract, Anthropic's CFO filed a sworn affidavit revealing the company had only made $5 billion in its entire lifetime. This directly contradicted leaked media reports suggesting they made $4.5 billion in 2025 alone. It revealed that the company's publicly perceived run rate was heavily exaggerated through the "shady revenue math" popular in Silicon Valley, a major discrepancy that most financial journalists ignored. 2. When the open-source agent library OpenClaw first launched, Anthropic deliberately allowed users to connect a $200/month "max account" and essentially burn through thousands of dollars of API compute at Anthropic's expense. Zitron points out that Anthropic knowingly let this happen to temporarily boost their usage metrics and hype while they raised a $30 billion funding round. Just weeks after securing the funding, they abruptly cut off access for these users, a move Zitron cites as proof of them being an "unethical company". Furthermore, the company has faced criticism for gaslighting users, maintaining poor service availability, and silently degrading model performance while rug-pulling users on rate limits. As Zitron summarizes, it is highly unlikely that either Anthropic or OpenAI actually care about these ethical boundaries beyond how they can be weaponized for better PR and higher valuations.
  - petcat 6mo ago
    > Despite cultivating a reputation as the "ethical" AI company, Zitron argues that Anthropic's actions show they are just as ruthless and ethically questionable as their competitors. Anthropic has taken 10s of billions from investors just like everyone else has. There is no such thing as "ethics" or "morality" when the scale of obligation is that large. So yes, this is obvious despite whatever image they try to cultivate.
    - fwipsy 6mo ago
      Anthropic is a public benefit corporation which limits liability to shareholders. Just because they screwed up their billing doesn't mean every ethical commitment they've ever made is bunk.
      - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
        > Anthropic is a public benefit corporation which limits liability to shareholders What does this have to do with their ethics? This seems irrelevant unless your understanding of ethics ends at fiduciary duty to investors.
        fwipsy 6mo ago
        It's the opposite. Parent comment was saying they must be unethical due to their duty to investors. As a public benefit corporation, they can take ethics into account even if it harms shareholders. The extent to which they do so is still up to them, as I understand it, but they aren't forced to be evil as parent was suggesting.
        Capricorn2481 5mo ago
        Ah, got you.
    - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
      > There is no such thing as "ethics" or "morality" when the scale of obligation is that large. At that scale, ethics and morality should become more important, not discarded
- MagicMoonlight 6mo ago
  Probably some Slopcoded bot which posts fake comments to drive people to their content. After all, if you’re paying hundreds of millions to buy these shitty podcasts, you might as well host some bots.
  - fwipsy 6mo ago
    Account is from 2016 with 6k karma? : doubt:
    - throwanem 6mo ago
      Why assume people would not buy and sell Hacker News accounts?
      - fwipsy 6mo ago
        Seems unlikely. I had a hell of a time finding someone to sell me this one.
  - Insanity 6mo ago
    Did you even check the link? It's a podcast from Cal Newport, a quite known figure (at least in software engineering / compsci circles). So it's not exactly a random shitty podcast. And, it's also (obviously) not my content.
    - Leynos 6mo ago
      I hadn't heard of him until he got famous last month for slagging off the AI industry.
- Insanity 6mo ago
  I understand not everyone has the interest or time to sit through an hour long podcast. But last I checked this is HN, and I think that podcast is right up the alley for many of us here. Cal Newport is not exactly a 'random podcaster'. Next time I can summarize some of the talking points in my comment though, but I didn't want to poorly regurgitate the arguments when they were readily available in the video lol. Although I see another poster has commented the key takeaways :)
  - esperent 6mo ago
    What I want is for people to give evidence that can be checked within a few minutes at most. But claiming you have proof and expecting me to a) just believe you or b) invest an hour of my time to dispute or agree with you... That's just a selfish way of having a conversation. If you gave me some timestamps in that hour, that would be fine. Or if you gave a much shorter and easier to consume piece of evidence and then said that it's also discussed in the podcast if someone wants to invest more time into this, also fine.
    - garbagewoman 6mo ago
      sometimes people aren't looking for an argument, theyre just sharing something. Discussions don't have to strictly be about right vs wrong, unless you're on reddit
- simplyluke 6mo ago
  Podcasts are still short form if we're talking about something as complex as "is this company ethical". Issues involving human players and disagreements over philosophy/ethics take a huge amount of information to understand at anything beyond a vibes level. You can understand almost any controversial issue better than almost everyone commenting on it by reading 1-3 books on the subject. It's becoming more of an x-factor as people get conditioned to expect everything to fit in a headline, chat response, or 10 second social media video.
  - empthought 6mo ago
    Podcasts (and video) are very low-throughput, low-density information channels. Essays and articles are superior. To demonstrate this, you can just compare the transcript of a typical podcast — even a high-quality, well-researched one — with a typical high-quality, well-researched blog post, essay, or journalistic article.
    - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
      It's odd that people don't understand this. It's not about Tiktok brain. I would rather read a book or a dense article than listen to people meander on a Podcast and pad their time.
    - Insanity 6mo ago
      Sure, but the other angle is time investment. I only listen to podcasts sporadically but I can definitely see why people like it. Not as a substitute to reading but _in addition_ to reading. Listening to a podcast can be done while driving, or cooking, etc. It beats sitting in traffic and just listening to music (to some people).
      - Capricorn2481 5mo ago
        I don't think multitasking and giving some of your attention to two people talking in conversation format is a great way to get information. There's a strong argument it's a recipe for getting misinformation, because you aren't verifying a single thing they say, and you may be going off the vibes of the host. An uncritical "Wow that's crazy" from podcast hosts is really all it takes for people to believe anything. And some people are so socially isolated and exposed to so much toxicity online that just listening to two people talk like friends severely lowers their guard to misinformation.
- inquirerGeneral 6mo ago
  [dead]
foobar_______ 6mo ago
Agreed. they are better at the PR game. Some developers are grasping at straws looking for ways to not feel guilty and justify their usage of LLMs is from the "good guys". Anthropic is currently filling this role but eventually people will see behind the smoke and mirrors and release its not all that different from OpenAI or some of the other AI labs who are willing to sacrifice any amount of ethics if they mean they get the right paycheck or stroke their ego that they were on the team that built digital god.
Leynos 6mo ago
[dead]

esperent 6mo ago

Pet peeve of mine is people saying "hey this thing is totally shady/false, I've got proof right here <links to hour long podcast>". It happens surprisingly often.

rexpop 6mo ago
Cal Newport and tech commentator Ed Zitron discussed this disparity between Anthropic's public image and their actual practices. Despite cultivating a reputation as the "ethical" AI company, Zitron argues that Anthropic's actions show they are just as ruthless and ethically questionable as their competitors. Anthropic has been deeply integrated with the US military, having been installed with classified access since June 2024. The podcast highlights that Claude has been actively utilized during the "Venezuela incursion" and the ongoing "war in Iran". Despite this active involvement, CEO Dario Amodei released a statement attempting to publicly distance the company from the Department of Defense by declaring they would not allow their technology to be used for "mass domestic surveillance" or "fully autonomous weapons". Zitron categorizes this as a highly calculated PR maneuver, pointing out that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of controlling autonomous weapons anyway. The stunt successfully manufactured a wave of positive press—with celebrities and commentators praising Anthropic as an ethical objector—right when the company was trying to secure an IPO or a massive ~$100 billion valuation, all while they quietly remained an active part of the war effort. Beyond their military contracts, the podcast details several highly questionable business practices Anthropic has used to artificially inflate their numbers: 1. During a lawsuit regarding their military contract, Anthropic's CFO filed a sworn affidavit revealing the company had only made $5 billion in its entire lifetime. This directly contradicted leaked media reports suggesting they made $4.5 billion in 2025 alone. It revealed that the company's publicly perceived run rate was heavily exaggerated through the "shady revenue math" popular in Silicon Valley, a major discrepancy that most financial journalists ignored. 2. When the open-source agent library OpenClaw first launched, Anthropic deliberately allowed users to connect a $200/month "max account" and essentially burn through thousands of dollars of API compute at Anthropic's expense. Zitron points out that Anthropic knowingly let this happen to temporarily boost their usage metrics and hype while they raised a $30 billion funding round. Just weeks after securing the funding, they abruptly cut off access for these users, a move Zitron cites as proof of them being an "unethical company". Furthermore, the company has faced criticism for gaslighting users, maintaining poor service availability, and silently degrading model performance while rug-pulling users on rate limits. As Zitron summarizes, it is highly unlikely that either Anthropic or OpenAI actually care about these ethical boundaries beyond how they can be weaponized for better PR and higher valuations.
- petcat 6mo ago
  > Despite cultivating a reputation as the "ethical" AI company, Zitron argues that Anthropic's actions show they are just as ruthless and ethically questionable as their competitors. Anthropic has taken 10s of billions from investors just like everyone else has. There is no such thing as "ethics" or "morality" when the scale of obligation is that large. So yes, this is obvious despite whatever image they try to cultivate.
  - fwipsy 6mo ago
    Anthropic is a public benefit corporation which limits liability to shareholders. Just because they screwed up their billing doesn't mean every ethical commitment they've ever made is bunk.
    - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
      > Anthropic is a public benefit corporation which limits liability to shareholders What does this have to do with their ethics? This seems irrelevant unless your understanding of ethics ends at fiduciary duty to investors.
      - fwipsy 6mo ago
        It's the opposite. Parent comment was saying they must be unethical due to their duty to investors. As a public benefit corporation, they can take ethics into account even if it harms shareholders. The extent to which they do so is still up to them, as I understand it, but they aren't forced to be evil as parent was suggesting.
        Capricorn2481 5mo ago
        Ah, got you.
  - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
    > There is no such thing as "ethics" or "morality" when the scale of obligation is that large. At that scale, ethics and morality should become more important, not discarded
MagicMoonlight 6mo ago
Probably some Slopcoded bot which posts fake comments to drive people to their content. After all, if you’re paying hundreds of millions to buy these shitty podcasts, you might as well host some bots.
- fwipsy 6mo ago
  Account is from 2016 with 6k karma? : doubt:
  - throwanem 6mo ago
    Why assume people would not buy and sell Hacker News accounts?
    - fwipsy 6mo ago
      Seems unlikely. I had a hell of a time finding someone to sell me this one.
- Insanity 6mo ago
  Did you even check the link? It's a podcast from Cal Newport, a quite known figure (at least in software engineering / compsci circles). So it's not exactly a random shitty podcast. And, it's also (obviously) not my content.
  - Leynos 6mo ago
    I hadn't heard of him until he got famous last month for slagging off the AI industry.
Insanity 6mo ago
I understand not everyone has the interest or time to sit through an hour long podcast. But last I checked this is HN, and I think that podcast is right up the alley for many of us here. Cal Newport is not exactly a 'random podcaster'. Next time I can summarize some of the talking points in my comment though, but I didn't want to poorly regurgitate the arguments when they were readily available in the video lol. Although I see another poster has commented the key takeaways :)
- esperent 6mo ago
  What I want is for people to give evidence that can be checked within a few minutes at most. But claiming you have proof and expecting me to a) just believe you or b) invest an hour of my time to dispute or agree with you... That's just a selfish way of having a conversation. If you gave me some timestamps in that hour, that would be fine. Or if you gave a much shorter and easier to consume piece of evidence and then said that it's also discussed in the podcast if someone wants to invest more time into this, also fine.
  - garbagewoman 6mo ago
    sometimes people aren't looking for an argument, theyre just sharing something. Discussions don't have to strictly be about right vs wrong, unless you're on reddit
simplyluke 6mo ago
Podcasts are still short form if we're talking about something as complex as "is this company ethical". Issues involving human players and disagreements over philosophy/ethics take a huge amount of information to understand at anything beyond a vibes level. You can understand almost any controversial issue better than almost everyone commenting on it by reading 1-3 books on the subject. It's becoming more of an x-factor as people get conditioned to expect everything to fit in a headline, chat response, or 10 second social media video.
- empthought 6mo ago
  Podcasts (and video) are very low-throughput, low-density information channels. Essays and articles are superior. To demonstrate this, you can just compare the transcript of a typical podcast — even a high-quality, well-researched one — with a typical high-quality, well-researched blog post, essay, or journalistic article.
  - Capricorn2481 6mo ago
    It's odd that people don't understand this. It's not about Tiktok brain. I would rather read a book or a dense article than listen to people meander on a Podcast and pad their time.
  - Insanity 6mo ago
    Sure, but the other angle is time investment. I only listen to podcasts sporadically but I can definitely see why people like it. Not as a substitute to reading but _in addition_ to reading. Listening to a podcast can be done while driving, or cooking, etc. It beats sitting in traffic and just listening to music (to some people).
    - Capricorn2481 5mo ago
      I don't think multitasking and giving some of your attention to two people talking in conversation format is a great way to get information. There's a strong argument it's a recipe for getting misinformation, because you aren't verifying a single thing they say, and you may be going off the vibes of the host. An uncritical "Wow that's crazy" from podcast hosts is really all it takes for people to believe anything. And some people are so socially isolated and exposed to so much toxicity online that just listening to two people talk like friends severely lowers their guard to misinformation.
inquirerGeneral 6mo ago
[dead]

foobar_______ 6mo ago

Agreed. they are better at the PR game. Some developers are grasping at straws looking for ways to not feel guilty and justify their usage of LLMs is from the "good guys". Anthropic is currently filling this role but eventually people will see behind the smoke and mirrors and release its not all that different from OpenAI or some of the other AI labs who are willing to sacrifice any amount of ethics if they mean they get the right paycheck or stroke their ego that they were on the team that built digital god.

Leynos 6mo ago

[dead]