Live data from Hacker News

Our position on open-weights models

anthropic.com

621–630 of 1001 posts

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#621
Anthropic’s second biggest issue is they increasingly rent when others buy. Even if model value compresses, owning your vertical stack protects your margins upstream, and potentially downstream in applications.

But the biggest issue is this. Many hate Dario because he’s smug, he caps usage, and because OpenAI effectively ran a counter-positioning campaign to paint Anthropic as undemocratic.

Who is he really and what are his motives? None of you know, really.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#622
For the sake of argument, let's assume everything in the post is agreed upon, does this mean

1. They'll open source the alignment technology? For open weight models, it's the only possible way to pass the safety without an external guardrail triggering system (which would be the same to open and closed weight models).

2. They'll allow others (including CCP) to define part of the safety test? Otherwise, I can't imagine how the CCP would be onboard.

3. A "western" model passing the safety test can be trained with distillation? Or is that a "distillation attack" as well?

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#623
> 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, just like voting eligibility tests aren't not to prevent people you dislike from voting! /s

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#625

Wow, this comment thread clearly shows that at least Anthropic has not been a great communicator. If one reads this with a charitable lens, Dario is simply saying that 1) Nation state actors are a threat which needs to be combatted by chip bans and distillation prevention and 2) open-weight models can pose biological risk. One may or may not agree with item 1 but item 2 above should have broad support given the unkno…

This argument is old and goes back to cyber security. Things like government backdoors are the same. It's true centralizing power in the hands of a "good" would theoretically be good. But the key part is the "good". I think after repeated experiences with governments and corporations, no rational person would ever assume them to be good. There are simply too many incentives to be bad.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#627
China will likely gain the capability to produce leading edge chips within a decade domestically. From then, occupying Taiwan will be about controlling the wests the access to that. Same with AI models, though I would say we are already about there. Dario is either lying to us or to himself that distillation plays a major role.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#628

In the first paragraph, > Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don’t regard such bans as a useful measure, Later (on banning chip sales to china) > we should crack down on the rampant smuggling and workarounds used to obtain access to such chips. If you truly believe that bans don't work, the same applies to hardware too. Furthermore, Dario says later "To address these concerns, I do support the fol…

At this point, Anthropic releasing a sonnet 4.x class open weights model would be a positive PR move that doesn’t affect their bottom line.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#629
Anthropic's run as the AI Good Guys lasted ... 6 months? Hope they had fun. Turns out there aren't any AI good guys. Every single one of these companies engages in all the same BS. At least with open weights models we (the users) get to keep something when the whole thing collapses.

Re: Our position on open-weights models

#630

In the first paragraph, > Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don’t regard such bans as a useful measure, Later (on banning chip sales to china) > we should crack down on the rampant smuggling and workarounds used to obtain access to such chips. If you truly believe that bans don't work, the same applies to hardware too. Furthermore, Dario says later "To address these concerns, I do support the fol…

> If you truly believe that bans don't work, the same applies to hardware too. No, software and hardware are different. You can very plausibly prevent smuggling of physical objects, and you very obviously cannot prevent smuggling/diffusion of open source bits-on-disk.

Exactly, compare banning books to banning guns.
Post reply on HN