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The Doom Justifies the Valuation

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#111

Post by ben_w »

siren2026 wrote: post #109
ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

>> Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits We must live in different planets. The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed. At this point everyone in tech assumes Anthropic and Mythos are the absolute best models. All of this got achieved without spending a single $$ in advertisement. This model is also probably really dangerous,…

> The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed.

Great PR.

For a product nobody can pay for.

And a high chance that when anyone can, the market shrinks from "worldwide internet users" to "the USA only".

And it's known to be a highly dynamic market: based on the historical average, it only takes 11 weeks to be completely trounced by someone else's model, so if you're out of the market that long you may as well not have bothered.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#112

Post by watwut »

aabhay wrote: post #60

If you look at Anthropic's blogs about their model timelines, there is roughly a ~3m period between a model being in internal preview until release. That means that inside of Anthropic, the next version beyond Mythos/Fable is already in preview, already being tested internally. Despite what Geohot is describing here about GLM, my understanding is that Anthropic employees have spent a significant amount of time grappl…

I mean, my company is also having internal test release before going out. That is just a normal process.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#113

Post by scarmig »

anon373839 wrote: post #100
scarmig wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of whether you believe in doom or not, it's this kind of wild, willful misunderstanding that makes people roll their eyes and dismiss you. Yes, people at Anthropic (and OpenAI, for that matter!) really, genuinely do believe AI poses a potential existential threat to humanity; every single one that I know personally believes that. This has been pointed out hundreds of times, and to simply dismiss it as mark…

With the reality-bending financial incentives that these people have, I simply do not trust your or anyone else's assessment of the genuineness of their beliefs. And anyway, it's quite ironic that from godless San Francisco of all places, we are supposed to simply accept that the harmful acts of religious extremists are justified because, well, they do believe in their cause.

The point here is not the correctness of their beliefs. It's about what the actual content of their beliefs is. If someone says that Donald Trump is a secret Shia supremacist and using that to explain his actions, pointing out that that belief about Trump's belief is wrong is not a statement that Trump's beliefs are correct, but that your model of Trump's belief is incorrect.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#114

Post by ben_w »

zozbot234 wrote: post #103
bryan0 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those words come directly from TFA: > It’s all just nonsensical hype And he’s referring to completely real and reasonable warnings in anthropic blog posts about the exponential rate of AI development.

What's "exponential" about AI development? Model parameter counts? Anthropic doesn't publish those for their own models, last I checked. Datacenter buildouts? Water consumption per request? There just isn't enough evidence that AI smarts is growing all that much, once you account for the scaling of inputs. That's what OP probably means by "nonsensical hype".

What's "exponential" about AI development?

The METR task-completion time horizons, for one.

https://metr.org/time-horizons/

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#115

Post by ben_w »

ajyoon wrote: post #64
chongli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? The whole point of the article is to answer this question, and here's the answer: Because all the AI doom fear-mongering is driving sky-high valuations. The more the public panics, the more investors open their wallets.

Is there any evidence of this? It seems like a thing people say all the time, but completely unsubstantiated.

In fairness, it is true that there is a correlation such that:

> The more the public panics, the more investors open their wallets.

I don't believe this to be causation, but I can see the correlation.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#116

Post by vintermann »

ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

> Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't?

That's a bit like asking, "why would someone claim to have a lot of money if they didn't?" It's step 1 in countless scams.

You can't think of any ways to exploit people by convincing them you have technology which might rule the world soon?

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#117

Post by ben_w »

chongli wrote: post #76
ajyoon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence of this? It seems like a thing people say all the time, but completely unsubstantiated.

What else is there? The product as delivered today doesn't come anywhere near a justification for these valuations. All of it is built on an expectation of future capabilities, and that's where the Dario-penned doom papers come in.

You cold also drive valuations like Musk does.

Hype up the *positives*.

Even here on HN, Tesla fans try to justify the market cap by pointing at Optimus, even though nobody can buy it and there's already competition for it which you can buy.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#118

Post by ben_w »

Barrin92 wrote: post #67
ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

>Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Because Americans are obsessed with eschatological narratives and action hero stories. I talked to a Palantir guy once who told me that he loves it when journalists describe his company as a James Bond villain because every single time the market cap goes up. If they said that they're SAP with Call of Duty marketing they'd actually lose money.…

> If they said that they're SAP with Call of Duty marketing they'd actually lose money. In other countries this strategy might not check out but in the US it's better to pretend to be a supervillain than to be boring

Well, that explains Musk.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#119

Post by siren2026 »

ben_w wrote: post #111
siren2026 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits We must live in different planets. The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed. At this point everyone in tech assumes Anthropic and Mythos are the absolute best models. All of this got achieved without spending a single $$ in advertisement. This model is also probably really dangerous,…

> The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed. Great PR. For a product nobody can pay for. And a high chance that when anyone can, the market shrinks from "worldwide internet users" to "the USA only". And it's known to be a highly dynamic market: based on the historical average, it only takes 11 weeks to be completely trounced by someone else's model, so if you're out of the m…

How many non-tech people knew about Anthropic before? How many know about Anthropic since this episode?

Still don't see it? Still don't see how the huge IPO coming up soon could profit from this?

Yes, this was a brilliant PR move (independent from the actual benefit of the model).

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#120

Post by ben_w »

siren2026 wrote: post #119
ben_w wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed. Great PR. For a product nobody can pay for. And a high chance that when anyone can, the market shrinks from "worldwide internet users" to "the USA only". And it's known to be a highly dynamic market: based on the historical average, it only takes 11 weeks to be completely trounced by someone else's model, so if you're out of the m…

How many non-tech people knew about Anthropic before? How many know about Anthropic since this episode? Still don't see it? Still don't see how the huge IPO coming up soon could profit from this? Yes, this was a brilliant PR move (independent from the actual benefit of the model).

> Still don't see it? Still don't see how the huge IPO coming up soon could profit from this?

"Would you like to buy Anthropic shares?"

"Anthropic? Didn't the government ban them?"

"Yes"

"I'll pass"

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