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Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

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Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#311

Post by EagnaIonat »

nomdep wrote: post #253
EagnaIonat wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But let's worry about what the US DoD is doing They want Anthropic to enabling mass surveillance and autonomous attack systems with no human in the loop. Hardly compares to a kid downloading a model to experiment with.

*To improve* mass surveillance and autonomous attack systems with no human in the loop. China and USA already had those kind of systems way before AI.

China is certainly lax, but the US doesn't allow autonomous ATTACK systems. For Attack systems it is always required that a human makes the judgement call when to attack.

Or least it didn't until the current regime.

The US does have autonomous defensive systems.

I could be wrong though, can you post your evidence? The closest I could find is loitering munitions.

Even so, a company shouldn't be forced to go against its ethics if those ethics help humans.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#312

Post by Alive-in-2025 »

rexpop wrote: post #264
chasd00 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion, what is the best approach, if any, to attempt to address it? There aren't many options for fighting the tax man, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". You're only option is to leave the US for somewhere better.

For the ultra-wealthy, leaving the United States is rarely the preferred strategy; instead, they use their immense resources to legally reshape the tax code and utilize complex loopholes. Billionaires like the Koch and Scaife families historically avoided massive estate and gift taxes by creating "charitable lead trusts" and private foundations. This allowed them to pass fortunes down to their heirs tax-free, provide…

The US people serve as the conquered people

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#313

Post by brookst »

ifh-hn wrote: post #139
brookst wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s because it shows either a simplistic or needlessly confrontational view of the world. Unless you’re independently wealthy (as some in HN are), you have to balance your morals, your views of how things should work, feeding your family, and recognizing that you may not actually know everything. It’s easy to sit back and advise others that they should die on every single hill. But it’s not especially insightful…

Piety? To who? Simplistic and/or confrontational doesn't mean wrong, even if you don't like the way it's presented. Just because a comment is short, sharp, and to the point doesn't mean the author hasn't thought out why that's their view. No one knows everything, that's certainly why I'm on hacker news. I'm here to learn and expand my knowledge. Unfortunately a lot of people on here would rather driveby-downvote than…

Piety isn’t about religiosity, it’s about, ugh, hate to say it, but virtue signaling.

Your last paragraph is so funny because I had to scroll up to be sure it wasn’t me. Literally could have typed that. Many abandoned accounts, same logic. Maybe it’s time.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#314

Post by brookst »

lurkshark wrote: post #75
brookst wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 days ago: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/15/claude-pentagon-anthropic-c... And I suspect that was not the first time the topic was discussed.

My theory is that Anthropic has been wanting to make this change and doing it now while they’re making a (leaked to the) public stand in the name of ethics was a good opportunity.

Honest question: why have an elaborate theory with no evidence when the simple facts support a much simpler conclusion?

Anthropic is free to do what they want. I can’t imagine the board meeting where this triple bank shot of goading the government into threatening the company to do what they want.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#315

Post by lebovic »

paxys wrote: post #263
lebovic wrote: post #156

I used to work at Anthropic. I fully believe that the folks mentioned in the article, like Jared Kaplan, are well-intentioned and concerned about the relationship between safety research and frontier capabilities – not purely profit. That said, I'm not thrilled about this. I joined Anthropic with the impression that the responsible scaling policy was a binding pre-commitment for exactly this scenario: they wouldn't s…

I interviewed at Anthropic last year and their entire "ethics" charade was laughable. Write essays about AI safety in the application. An entire interview round dedicated to pretending that you truly only care about AI safety and not the money. Every employee you talk to forced to pretend that the company is all about philanthropy, effective altruism and saving the world. In reality it was a mid-level manager intervi…

> Every employee you talk to forced to pretend that the company is all about philanthropy, effective altruism and saving the world

I was an interviewer, and I wasn't encouraged to talk about philanthropy, effective altruism, or ethics. Maybe even slightly discouraged? My last two managers didn't even know what effective altruism was. (Which I thought was a feat to not know months into working there.)

When did you interview, and for what part of the company?

> knowing fully well that we'd do what the bosses told us to do [...] now that real money is on the line

This is a cynical take.

I didn't just do what I was told, and I dissented with $XXM in EV on the line. But I also don't work there anymore, at least one of the cofounders wasn't happy about it and complained to my manager, and many coworkers thought I had no sense of self preservation – so I might be naive.

The more realistic scenario is that a) most people have good intentions, b) there's a decision that will cause real harm, and c) it's made anyway to keep power / stay on the frontier, with the justification that the overall outcome is better. I think that's what happened here.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#319

Post by cmrdporcupine »

baal80spam wrote: post #318

Of course they do. You would have to be delusional to think that they won't, at some point.

What's "entertaining" is more the speed at which it's happening.

It took Google probably 15 years to fully evil-ize. Anthropic ... two?

There is no "ethical capitalism" big tech company possible, esp once VC is involved, and especially with the current geopolitical circumstances.

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