The excessive scepticism on Hacker News has poisoned any attempts at rational AI discourse.

The American Government has weaponised state power in a clumsy, corrupt and punitive attack against Anthropic, in an escalating war over control of AI.

Meanwhile, HN has anchored on "marketing hype" as the only possible explanation - all evidence is contorted to fit into this increasingly contrived explanation. Object level analysis is disregarded in favor of dunking on Anthropic.

AI is a threat to your job, status, beliefs, and way of life. For HN, believing this truth is harder than coming up with rationalisations for why it MUST be untrue.

I appreciate the grounded few on HN who continue to engage with object level analysis, and accept that the world is about to change in a pretty bizarre way.

This is very reminiscent of the NSA's attempt to limit crypto access of websites in the 90s. We were very close to having the U.S. ban SSL right when it was becoming the clear solution for safe open web transfers for payments.

I assume only the weight of economic pressure and lack of alternatives (and plenty of opposition) kept the doors open, but the same "national interest and security" BS was trotted out then, too.

Big difference this time is nobody needs Fable/Mythos to accomplish anything. There is no magic line here, only improved connective work with less intervention. But it stands to reason that this will cause a huge chilling effect on AI development in the U.S. if it stands and other labs will eventually bypass Fable/Mythos in capability.

To use a car analogy, the models are being built like engine improvements, sometimes going from V6 to V8, but other orgs might improve the car's wind resistance or fuel injection, which leads to a similar speed improvements. There is a lot of space for improvements all along the chain which is why this is such a pointless move.

Knowing this administration (and Anthropic's ham-fisted tactics) this ends in a week or less with some sort of "deal" and was all part of some high stakes negotiation. Possibly even beneficial to Anthropic, because where does it leave OpenAI once they settle on some sweetheart deal? The precedent is set.

Lots of people on HN, and lots of chronic forum users, think that being skeptical/bitter/cynical makes them sound smarter.

Most nerds (like myself) outgrew this edgy mentality in highschool/college. Realistically this mentality just makes it impossible to see anything except through the darkest possible lens.

This take feels a little like the clergy saying printing presses are dangerous because people will read bad things and spread bad ideas. Turns out they totalky did, but on net it's a small price to pay for widespread literacy.

I fully agree and this other side of excessive scepticism people are ruining it for everyone else. They are a big distraction. They keep saying things like:

- Anthropic is just doing this for marketing stunt

- AI is like NFT's

- circular deals

- the bubble will burst anytime soon

- the hype bro's are propping up the stock market so that they can exit quick like grifters

(I just made the last one up to force terminology they use)

This is really distracting because the main problem here is that AI is getting too powerful to be just handed out to normal people like us. If you still believe it is all hype, you are getting distracted from the real problem.

I'm guessing at some point this kind of rhetoric will die away and we focus on real problem

This is so true, if anyone posts any positive aspect of AI, those comments are downvoted to abyss. As a software developer I understand how others sees AI as a threat to their job safety and saying AI is evil and must be stopped is so selfish when AI truly can lift millions out of abject poverty in the future.

What’s so funny is that same people are the ones that identify themselves as liberals as long as they can keep their privileged, highly paid jobs.

Most of the people on HN thinking this stuff is garbage won't be working in tech in five years.

There simply won't be jobs for them.

The risk is that all of these very incredibly smart and disgruntled people decide to do something about it. Elite overproduction, but instead as a result of enormous shift in supply side economics.