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> I don't know why you state this as if it's evidence against the concerns lol. Someone being concerned about the incentives of a situation doesn't de facto mak

> I don't know why you state this as if it's evidence against the concerns lol. Someone being concerned about the incentives of a situation doesn't de facto make them immune to those incentives, obviously. I think you're reading some subtext into my comment that I didn't intend. Knowing myself, I assume the scare quotes there are just a bit of casual irony re: the insanely high stakes here. The word "concerns" as used by previous commenters doesn't seem equal to the context. > The implication that someone who's concerned about an arms race dynamic could simply opt out of the system that produces that dynamic is simply confused about what arms race dynamics are. You can, in fact, opt out. You can opt out and do your damndest to stop what's happening, throw every cent you have at it, bend any ear that will listen, make use of the fact that your voice (as Anthropic leadership) has some meaningful weight. If you really believe that we are heading down a path that's likely to end poorly for most or all of humanity, and you are the kind of person who's inclined to favor saving billions of lives over saving your own skin when the stakes are still relatively distant, abstract, and generally unclear, opting out is obviously on the table as a grand gesture that burns your position in the race to show just how fucking serious you are. The sense of inevitability your comment shares with many others does not seem well founded---we have, for instance, not had a global nuclear war yet. Leaders in the 20th and 21st centuries have shown remarkable restraint. If today's political and tech leaders are unable to think beyond this inevitability, for whatever reason, the worst outcomes essentially become a self-fulfilling prophecy to the extent that reality bears them out. --- But yes, these people are acting the way they are for obvious reasons, obviously. My previous comment is reacting to the general disagreement over whether Anthropic actually believes what they say about safety, etc., or whether it's a marketing gimmick. The purpose of my comment is to explain that "it's hard not to be cynical" about actions taken by very rich and powerful people that are claimed to be in everybody's best interests but are indistinguishable from the actions they would take to maximize their future power and wealth. I think everyone ought to agree with that statement. It's not a value judgment; it's simply an observation of how it feels to be on a plane whose pilot appears to be robbing the passengers (including you) at gunpoint and is conspicuously wearing the only parachute on board.

SubiculumCode 4mo ago
It's not just America. The main secret is out of the bag. If it wasn't Anthropic, it would be another company/nation state. Sure they could obtain, and with not.money or leverage, complain about data centers at local rallies, or they can be in the game, and hopefully steer it. It's going to happen with or without any one company or country. The secret it out, and it's unstoppable without complete societal breakdown..So either you advocate for the end of civilization, or you hope that you can help steer the emergence of super intelligence into something not wholly terrible. Personally, I don't see much hope, even if there wasn't such a thing as AI. The power to destroy is always easier than the power to create, and as our power grows, the differential grows, until at some point, containment is no longer possible
- caconym_ 4mo ago
  > It's not just America. I'll mention again the nuclear analogy. It is, believe it or not, possible for great powers, and even adversary great powers, to agree to limit the development and proliferation of dangerous technologies. > The main secret is out of the bag. This is not something you can do in a shed with a handful of GPUs just because you know "the main secret". To build something like Mythos you need tens of billions of dollars, massive amounts of power, enormous buildings filled with specialized bleeding edge computer chips that are made by (optimistically) a handful of companies with deep government ties. You need free access to all the intellectual property that humans have created and posted openly on the internet. You need all of this at each step, and to take each next step you (or somebody) needs to have taken the previous one. For now, there are a million ways for a government to pump the brakes on this cycle.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    > It is, believe it or not, possible for great powers, and even adversary great powers, to agree to limit the development and proliferation of dangerous technologies. You were literally just criticizing Anthropic as disingenuous for begging for this. Or is your position that people other than those near the front of the race can agree to limit development? And if so: provide evidence. Note also a key ingredient that makes nuclear non-proliferation possible is that they're pretty much useless weapons. There is no smaller order nuke that's dramatically more useful than a large conventional weapon. That's not true of AI models, which appear to be monotonically useful as they become more powerful.

SubiculumCode 4mo ago

It's not just America. The main secret is out of the bag. If it wasn't Anthropic, it would be another company/nation state. Sure they could obtain, and with not.money or leverage, complain about data centers at local rallies, or they can be in the game, and hopefully steer it. It's going to happen with or without any one company or country. The secret it out, and it's unstoppable without complete societal breakdown..So either you advocate for the end of civilization, or you hope that you can help steer the emergence of super intelligence into something not wholly terrible. Personally, I don't see much hope, even if there wasn't such a thing as AI. The power to destroy is always easier than the power to create, and as our power grows, the differential grows, until at some point, containment is no longer possible

caconym_ 4mo ago
> It's not just America. I'll mention again the nuclear analogy. It is, believe it or not, possible for great powers, and even adversary great powers, to agree to limit the development and proliferation of dangerous technologies. > The main secret is out of the bag. This is not something you can do in a shed with a handful of GPUs just because you know "the main secret". To build something like Mythos you need tens of billions of dollars, massive amounts of power, enormous buildings filled with specialized bleeding edge computer chips that are made by (optimistically) a handful of companies with deep government ties. You need free access to all the intellectual property that humans have created and posted openly on the internet. You need all of this at each step, and to take each next step you (or somebody) needs to have taken the previous one. For now, there are a million ways for a government to pump the brakes on this cycle.
- estearum 4mo ago
  > It is, believe it or not, possible for great powers, and even adversary great powers, to agree to limit the development and proliferation of dangerous technologies. You were literally just criticizing Anthropic as disingenuous for begging for this. Or is your position that people other than those near the front of the race can agree to limit development? And if so: provide evidence. Note also a key ingredient that makes nuclear non-proliferation possible is that they're pretty much useless weapons. There is no smaller order nuke that's dramatically more useful than a large conventional weapon. That's not true of AI models, which appear to be monotonically useful as they become more powerful.