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 being bothered about it at all.

It is a horrible and ruthless company and hearing a presumably rich ex-employee painting a rosy picture does not change anything.

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.

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?

> 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?

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.

At least they're paying. OpenAI should have the largest IP settlement, they just would rather contest it and not pay for eternity.

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."

Like op said, they have values. You just don't agree with their values.

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?

Copyright is bad and its good that AI companies stole the stuff and distilled it into models

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

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

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.

> 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?

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