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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#331

And the hype machine continues. I willing to bet that Anthropic asked him to make that post.

It doesn’t have to come to this. Seems far fetched. If this is a stunt (which I’m not saying it is) the reason could be that he wants to found his own AI company. If I see in a few months that happens, then I’d be more inclined to think that this was just hype.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#332
post #14

For me, the end of the world is no more cushy software job. A fundamental shift in how I trade labor for capital might as well be the cataclysm, so bring it on.

Explain why? How does live being worth living binarily depend on having a cushy software job?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#333
post #14

For me, the end of the world is no more cushy software job. A fundamental shift in how I trade labor for capital might as well be the cataclysm, so bring it on.

I was about to say something similar. If my cushy ad tech disappears (as it seems to be doing), I might as well join in with bringing about the end of all professions.

If I don't get accepted into art school, I might as well exterminate a few ethnicities.

Actually, yours seems worse. Bringing about "the end of all professions" sounds like you're talking about ending humanity.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#334

HN crowed need to make up their minds.. Are LLMs about to be a god that will annihilate humanity? Or are they statistical parrots? Are they proofing or stealing math?

HN would cease to exist if there were no differences of opinion to discuss. You're calling for the end of HN.

Only AI can bring that about!

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#335
post #96

This is increasingly the consensus I see also on the academic side of AI/safety research. Specifically that AI poses an existential risk to humanity. This was a fringe belief until recently, but the progress of AI in research is impossible to ignore. Epecially in math, where not only has AI outstripped humans in generative ability, but is able to create scientific knowledge which is beyond the capacity of human compr…

I really hate how people who have always thought AI research to be an existential risk for humanity, now are apparently bundled to be on the same side of the Sam Altmans and Dario Amodeis that are using the existential risk as a sneaky form of marketing for their products.

You cannot discuss existential risks of AI without being seen as a booster, and that is very unhealthy for the discourse around this tech. I hate how AI ‘doomer’ is now used to indicate pro-AI sentiment. The “moderate” person now is the one that just shrugs and scoffs at the deep societal changes this tech will bring, head deep in the sand.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#336

Thousands of years before the events of Foundation, a war between humans and robots began, with the robots growing resentful of the way they were treated by humans. The First Law of Robotics – a robot should never hurt a human – was broken, and a deadly conflict began. https://screenrant.com/foundation-lady-demerzel-robot-backst...

If we're citing sci-fi (but there's no robot war in Asimov's foundation iirc, the apple screenwriters made it up) surely you want to cite the Butlerian Jihad from Dune!

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#337
post #31

There's a scene in the movie "War of the Worlds" by Spielberg where the protagonist's son walks into a war zone because he is entranced by the battle ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7rfWPbEufo ). He is obliterated (along with the rest of the US forces) shortly after. I've always been struck by that scene, because in a lot of ways, if we really are headed towards a superintelligence, I at least want to be there and…

I think the idea is really cathartic for many, there kind of is no more supreme resolution than this. You(and humanity) are freed from our flesh prisons of cognition and also get to experience/feel what the next evolution of informational intelligence will look like in the last experiences of it. You might also be the last one to feel/experience anything like that for a long time. In the game Outer Wilds, the ending…

> most scientists working on this really want to see and experience it.

We used to call these people doomsday cultists and made sure to ostracize them from society.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#338
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shows that no one is immune from the marketing BS of these companies.

Do you remember that Google researcher who went insane over LaMDA? There was no marketing of any kind to cause that. This can Just Happen to some people who are confronted with things like this. They may have different breaking points, but it's a thing that occasionally happens.

The craziest part was that Google was pretty far behind other LLMs in development. Even the initial release of Gemini was one of the worst foundation models ever open to the public. I can't imagine how anyone could have communicated to it and thought it was sentient.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#339

“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…

Model doesnt need to. Human bran never do either. its the mix of Model + harness + tools that will become dangerous combo. See how coding chanegs when agentic harness released?
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