Their position seems fair to me - sure it does help them as well, but I don't necessarily disagree with the risk they are laying out.

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Johnny_Bonk 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

THiS! I'm pretty amazed how many people shoot them down without acknowledging the very real and somewhat probable risks they and other researchers have laid out. I don't agree with every point they make but folks really do just seem to think we should just keep building any technology and whine when we start to consider there are very real risks associated with powerful technology. checks notes see nuclear bombing of japan

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chrsw 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Re: shooting them down, I think there are a lot of people out there that consider the US a bigger threat than China. Maybe they're right, I don't know. But I do know that as an American, I'm not looking forward to finding out.

And then there are probably people who are more politically neutral who think Anthropic is using China as an excuse to crush competition. Which could also be true.

But fundamentally, if this technology is so dangerous, why does anyone get to control it?

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reasonableklout 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I thought Dwarkesh's position was pretty thoughtful: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dow-anthropic

> Nobody is qualified to steward the development of superintelligence. It is a terrifying, unprecedented thing that our species is doing right now, and the fact that private companies aren’t the ideal institutions to take up this task does not mean the Pentagon or the White House is.

> The only way we can preserve our free society is if we make laws and norms through our political system that it is unacceptable for the government to use AI to enforce mass surveillance and censorship and control. Just as after WW2, the world set the norm that it is unacceptable to use nuclear weapons to wage war.

	▲	Johnny_Bonk 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for sharing, i agree no one should have absolute control of anything imo, and the mo greater the magnitude of implications the more important it should be stewarded democratically with clear and transparent principles with values adhering to things like human dignity, freedom, human, planetary & animal wellbeing etc etc. ill have to read the article

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reasonableklout 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is consistent with their stated beliefs, unlike OpenAI who flip flop every 6 months on whether they support open source or not.

I think their biggest PR problem is that many people still think of loss-of-control/misalignment etc. as sci-fi. And the distillation arguments come off poorly because people feel as though all the labs have trained on their creative output without their consent, so they deserve to own the result in some way.

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eddielement 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed, makes logical sense. You can disagree with specific premises, but the best arguments aren't "OPEN SOURCE GOOD" or "SELFISH ANTHROPIC"!

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riskd 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

China bad!