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Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

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Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and Airbnb both had similar risks in their S1s, for obvious reasons.

And both have been damaging to society. And are getting fined and chased out of certain countries. Why would you throw investment in this unless you’re just leveraging the growth in the time it takes for regulatory issues to appear? Which is terribly unethical. Wall to wall bastards. I’d rather die poor than contribute to the further decline of society.

Maybe those who seek and profit from the decline in our society also want to promote divisiveness?

Maybe divisiveness itself, is part of the problem?

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is AI in the category of oil, cigs, and beer? Its software ....

Because oil, cigs, and beer don't create the existential threat to the human race that Anthropic is trying to claim it creates. Yes, it is software , something more powerful and thus potentially more harmful than any of the above physical products.

I don't buy the "existential threat" argument for a second.

Nuclear weapons are an existential threat. AI is not. If AI can control nuclear weapons, then maybe. I don't believe any nuclear power has added an AI interface to their nuclear controls.

Until that time, it's general purpose software and is mostly useful and mostly benign. That's my take.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is AI in the category of oil, cigs, and beer? Its software ....

Is your comment meant to be making fun of the people who think AI is doing no harm? The world is considerably worse because of AI than the effects of beer and cigarettes. No, I'm not joking.

Last time I checked alcoholism is heavily linked to cancer, crime and violence, birth defects, and poverty. Cigarettes cause cardiovascular issues and preventable deaths.

I am not aware of a single death due to AI, or any cancer, or physical harms. Maybe I missed it?

I believe AI has "facilitated fraud" by allowing already existing bad actors to make more plausible scams, but that is not an AI harm, any more than the phone company being used by the Mafia to order murders being a "telephone harm" (both are tragic, as should go without saying).

There are claims that AI has harmed people by encouraging their delusions. I am not convinced that these claims have merit (maybe they do, who knows?).

AI has apparently enabled cheating on a vast scale and test scores have gone down. I dont think that's an AI problem: that's an ethics and school administration problem (some teachers create AI traps to punish students, or have live tests, etc to stymie AI cheating - which is to say they actually adapt to the technology landscape).

I am not making fun of anyone. AI is not harming society, threatening civilization, raising electricity prices, or threatening massive job loss. Seriously.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a genuinely huge divisive opinion on AI companies. We don’t see this due to our particular industry echo chambers but really the majority of society has bigger problems and this offers them no solutions and threatens to take their lifelines away. Divisive technology leads to hate. Flock as well which is an us and them. Same mindset. We are not as popular as we think we are. I know which side of the fe…

Well said. The divisiveness is not inherent in the technology. Other forces are driving divisiveness around issues: AI seems to simply be caught up in that trend. I say "AI IS OK!"

Well it’s a little more complicated than that. It doesn’t just manifest itself. People create it. And people do that for a reason. So there is intent. And that means it’s not naturally inert and consequence free and “ok” in a social construct.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And both have been damaging to society. And are getting fined and chased out of certain countries. Why would you throw investment in this unless you’re just leveraging the growth in the time it takes for regulatory issues to appear? Which is terribly unethical. Wall to wall bastards. I’d rather die poor than contribute to the further decline of society.

Maybe those who seek and profit from the decline in our society also want to promote divisiveness? Maybe divisiveness itself, is part of the problem?

Yep. We’re tribal apes. This is just a foot on the accelerator.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think phones were similarly hated, but diluted over a ~15 year period as they were gradually introduced to society. AI is happening much faster, practically all at once. And I think the extent of the hatred in part is also due to how widespread it is, not just how fast it's spread. It's everywhere. If you watch YouTube, you're hearing people narrating scripts read by AI. Social media posts are written with AI. Stud…

Its not just pervasiveness, but how it's characterized. "AI data centers are raising electricity rates." or "AI pivot is the reason for 10% layoffs". It's rare that you read "AI cures cancer" or "AI reducing inflation" or "AI raising standard of living for blue collar workers". The relentless drum beat on AI news is negative even when there is zero - literally zero - evidence around the speculation. To wit: AI will d…

> To wit: AI will destroy all of humanity, or the related "AI will become sentient and lead to threat to human civ" etc. This is pure negative science fiction

All of this is true, but it is the two main AI companies themselves who created and marketed this narrative.

It's their negative science fiction. It is part of the marketing campaign they are running that is the foundation of arguments that the government should be their funding backstop (OpenAI have made this explicit), that open weights AI is more dangerous, that China is a threat, that only they can solve the problems they themselves are creating.

(After all, if China can only do what they are doing by distilling American models, which is what they claim, then the big American AI labs could shut down the risk for decades by downing tools out of principle.)

This whole fear scenario is more or less the entire basis for Anthropic's original elevator pitch, after all: that AI is dangerous and that they will specialise in making it safe.

Churlish to blame the media for accurately reporting what Musk, Amodei and Altman have said and the sort of blasé, detached, sociopathic way they say it.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a genuinely huge divisive opinion on AI companies. We don’t see this due to our particular industry echo chambers but really the majority of society has bigger problems and this offers them no solutions and threatens to take their lifelines away. Divisive technology leads to hate. Flock as well which is an us and them. Same mindset. We are not as popular as we think we are. I know which side of the fe…

Well said. The divisiveness is not inherent in the technology. Other forces are driving divisiveness around issues: AI seems to simply be caught up in that trend. I say "AI IS OK!"

AI is pretty universally hated, it might be the one thing that large swaths of society have unity about! It's right up there with thinking babies and puppies are cute.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#78

The risk is that we rise up and violently lynch the elites when they try to implement autonomous AI mass surveillance backed by an army of robots to quell the growing unrest of unemployed "useless eaters". It's a big risk and the only ways to mitigate it are either: a) build the dystopian system quickly and violently killing all dissenters on sight b) build a utopian system where robots build our houses, grow our foo…

How about

scenario c) Mass surveillance is used to reduce crime in high crime areas usually ignored by police, and public safety is provided to all citizens, even the poor and working class?

How about the army of robots helps to clean the streets, provide services to the poor and working classes, and provide high quality low cost housing, clean water, and livable cities?

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very long interview, and I really don't think it's as rosy for AI as you're painting it. Jasmine makes it clear throughout that people are very concerned about data centers in their areas, and AI in general. From the comments on that post, Rachel says: > With all due respect to Nate and Jasmine I think they are overthinking why people hate data centers - it’s a fairly direct answer. People hate data centers…

I read that comment as well at the time and was taken aback. After such a lengthy discussion where Jasmine went and talked to the people doing the disagreeing over multiple weeks and reported her findings, Rachel replies that no, this is wrong, her presumably pre-existing belief is correct, and she cites nothing at all in support of this. Due respect seemed lacking despite claims to the contrary. Likewise, I am taken…

I feel like we read two different articles. Both Nate and Jasmine think the outlook for AI looks grim. They both think that the locals are right to protest, they think that the concern about AI and its environmental impact is real, they both think that AI is politically toxic and SV is out of touch.

Meanwhile, your comment downplays all of the legitimate concerns that Jasmine discusses and worse, even invents concerns to downplay as if Jasmine had reported on them. In particular, you said that noise is a non-issue – that's not discussed at all in the interview (CMD+F "noise" – zero results).

You said that data centers "are not really driving electric costs up for residents," but Jasmine doesn't say that at all. Instead, she says that power and electricity are the most serious of everyone's environmental concerns, and that electricity rates going up is just one of the concerns that motivates opposition.

You said that the "they will take our jobs" argument is not on anybody's mind, which is literally false. Jasmine says job displacement wasn't the dominant explanation that people gave for opposing local data centers, but they both repeatedly discuss job displacement. Jasmine even quotes people she interviewed as saying "my boss keeps making me use AI, I have to say that I’m using AI or people won’t resource my project."

You said that NDAs prevented governments from clarifying "bluntly false" narratives, but that's, at best, cherry-picking what Jasmine was saying. You're right that NDAs were used and officials couldn't correct rumors about deals or water usage, but the interview does not say that the concerns people had were just straight up false. She notes that they had real concerns like grid strain, gas generation (from the power plants they're putting on data center property), ugly facilities, temporary jobs, subsidies, secrecy, and an unequal distribution of the benefits.

> Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of?

I find it strange that you're putting more stock in a substack journalist from the Bay area who went to Wisconsin to figure out why people are doing something, than the people who live there and are doing that thing. Do the people who live in the places where data centers are going up have no value to their opinions? Does Rachel need her own Substack before we can take her bonafides seriously?

I'm taken aback.

Re: Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor, sources say

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. The divisiveness is not inherent in the technology. Other forces are driving divisiveness around issues: AI seems to simply be caught up in that trend. I say "AI IS OK!"

AI is pretty universally hated, it might be the one thing that large swaths of society have unity about! It's right up there with thinking babies and puppies are cute.

I am willing to concede that AI has a negative reputation, but what I'm saying is that it shouldn't.

AI is a neutral technology.

The telephone (whose automation caused massive layoffs of telephone operators btw) can be used to order a pizza, talk to your mom, or facilitate drug trafficking and organized crime.

No one complains about telephones. It's a utility. AI also is a utility.

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