Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our position on open-weights models

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#411

Post by mrcwinn »

cogman10 wrote: post #28

> Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models. > All sufficiently capable models, open and closed, should go through mandatory safety testing. Yeah, this is anthropic advocating for a ban on open weight models. Who runs this test? What happens if this test is too costly or the administrator refuses to allow certain people to participate. This is exactly how the US has banned goods in the past, by r…

So, if an open weights model was found to be very dangerous, what - just too bad? One could, of course, design an open safety protocol, written and performed by people in the executive branch, accountable to an elected official.

I love how remarkably inconsistent this community is. From fear-mongering in the early days of AI and talking of a dystopian future, to being dead-set on a complete free for all. (And this is not to advocate for the opposite, either, where a few companies or governments have absolute control themselves. But surely an arms race is not the answer.)

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#412

Post by ACCount37 »

bigyabai wrote: post #387
credit_guy wrote: post #370

I know it's unpopular, or unfashionable, but I agree with this letter. LLMs are becoming so powerful that they are dangerous. We've seen last week with the OpenAI hacking (by mistake) Hugging Face debacle. It is absolutely ok to have open weight models at the level of GPT-OSS-100B. That one was released one year ago, and I think it's still a strong one. GLM 5.2 is a whole new level, but it appears to still be safe. M…

> We've seen last week with the OpenAI hacking (by mistake) Hugging Face debacle. If the biggest danger of LLMs is that they can hack traditional systems, there is no significant threat to humanity posed by releasing them in open-weight form. Security doesn't become less of a problem by making hacking even more criminal. That's what's an unsafe mindset looks like.

This is the "baby's first AI risk" tier of AI danger. There is no known upper limit to how powerful those systems get, and there might not be one.

Don't think "a smart guy". Think "project Manhattan and CIA put together, all in one server rack".

We're lucky to have "they can hack traditional systems" as an early warning shot. Clearly, it's wasted on many.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#413

Post by neya »

cogman10 wrote: post #28

> Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models. > All sufficiently capable models, open and closed, should go through mandatory safety testing. Yeah, this is anthropic advocating for a ban on open weight models. Who runs this test? What happens if this test is too costly or the administrator refuses to allow certain people to participate. This is exactly how the US has banned goods in the past, by r…

Also the whole premise of this is basically "US good, China bad"

Whatever Anthropic accuses the Chinese of possibly doing and being capable of, the US is as well. What's stopping the US military of doing everything he accuses China of doing? Infact, the framework suggested is simply a joke. Basically "trust me, bro" in an elaborate form.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#414

Post by verdverm »

rubslopes wrote: post #367
ajyoon wrote: post #172

To everyone here pushing for total proliferation of open models -- what should be done about open weight bioweapon and cyber-offense capabilities? Is it simply the cost of freedom that we should allow attackers to access these tools? The OpenAI / Hugging Face incident shows what a GPT 5.6 level model can do off the leash; within ~6 months, open weight models will match this and every bad actor under the sun will be a…

If this is really the risk, then we should approach LLMs like atomic bombs: the US should reach out to other nations so they all agree on no one developing any more AI models. That's the only way you could possibly convince another party to stop. The US should set the example, not conveniently keep all the spoils.

unfortunately, the US has incentivized the opposite behavior for atomic bombs and we are seeing moves towards greater proliferation

I would not be surprised if the same incentives are created by the US for Ai

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#415

Post by sbarre »

tyre wrote: post #374
cogman10 wrote: post #28

> Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models. > All sufficiently capable models, open and closed, should go through mandatory safety testing. Yeah, this is anthropic advocating for a ban on open weight models. Who runs this test? What happens if this test is too costly or the administrator refuses to allow certain people to participate. This is exactly how the US has banned goods in the past, by r…

What are you suggesting as an alternative? Everyone seems to want some fairytale world where there are open models, they’re all safe according to that person’s exact balance of risk and capabilities, and no one except the author or cynics are acting in good faith. What Dario lays out is very reasonable _of course_ the devil is in the details, but between him and Altman, there’s a clear divide on who to trust.

How about we don't trust either of the proprietary shovel salesmen?

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#416

Post by hamasho »

I wonder if publishing these documents is not just a public stunt, but heavily integrated with Anthropic's business storategy to maximize operational efficiency. Companies often have several internal documents for a single policy like "position on open-weight models", one for public (like this), others for the legal team, the lobbyist, the developers, the investors, etc. The differences and nuances of those manuals can be very huge and are necessary to maximize the goal from each branch, but often a cause of headaches like bureaucracy, communication friction, outdated information, etc.

A single canonical official document can make it very simple. Even though each department cannot achieve the maximum gain from nuanced documents, keeping operational context as simple as possible may really improve LLM driven operations to move faster and cut cost.

If "publishing pleasant positions and actually following them in general" becomes a good business storategy in LLM driven society, it can be one of very few good outcomes from this dystopian AI craze.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#417

Post by monk_grilla »

m3h wrote: post #207

Someone who until yesterday did not seem bothered by his technology being possibly used to bomb elementary girls school in another country seems to suddenly care about the repression of citizens in yet another country. No, we don't buy your virtue signaling. And we certainly don't need your better-than-thou opinions on this year's "nightmare scenarios".

> Someone who until yesterday did not seem bothered by his technology being possibly used to bomb elementary girls school in another country...

I might have missed something but wasn't the big story that Dario refused the Department of War's demand to use Anthropic's models for such purposes?

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#418

Post by dolebirchwood »

ajyoon wrote: post #172

To everyone here pushing for total proliferation of open models -- what should be done about open weight bioweapon and cyber-offense capabilities? Is it simply the cost of freedom that we should allow attackers to access these tools? The OpenAI / Hugging Face incident shows what a GPT 5.6 level model can do off the leash; within ~6 months, open weight models will match this and every bad actor under the sun will be a…

> what should be done about open weight bioweapon and cyber-offense capabilities?

If the model is capable of it, then it was in the model's training data, which means it was on the internet or published in books made available for consumption. So if any member of the public could have gotten their hands on that information, so be it. If the knowledge was too dangerous for public access, then it should have been highly classified and never found its way into the training data. Tough shit, frankly.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#420

Post by adastra22 »

ajyoon wrote: post #172

To everyone here pushing for total proliferation of open models -- what should be done about open weight bioweapon and cyber-offense capabilities? Is it simply the cost of freedom that we should allow attackers to access these tools? The OpenAI / Hugging Face incident shows what a GPT 5.6 level model can do off the leash; within ~6 months, open weight models will match this and every bad actor under the sun will be a…

The bioweapon thing is absolute movie plot fiction. Go speak to some biologists about this and they'll set you straight.

Cyber capabilities go both ways. Better offensive capabilities means better penetration testing by white hat security experts, which leads to better protections.

Post reply on HN