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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#551

Post by jesse_dot_id »

ViscountPenguin wrote: post #282
bwfan123 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More doomerism. Try to implement a deterministic workflow using agents with the latest models and no humans-in-the-loop, and you will realize what they are really capable of. There is too much unnecessary fear-mongering. All of this is only coming from the 2 AI labs trying to IPO. Not from anyone else.

Exactly correct, they are only capable of tasks that any school child could do; like solving millenium prize problems, hacking into tech companies, or tuning particle colliders. Nothing to see here.

There are humans behind all of these actions. We're just not holding them responsible for some reason re: hacking into tech companies.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#552

Post by Paradigma11 »

idle_zealot wrote: post #438
bpodgursky wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting "wealth inequality" in the same bucket as nuclear weapons is just slop. The OP is talking about existential threats, not things that personally annoy you.

It's not a "personal annoyance" that twelve people control half of the wealth in the world. Our current society did a better job concentrating power than any previous one, and concentrated power is extremely dangerous.

LLMs give most people on this planet the possibility of an affordable genius level assistant. Compared to that, those Dollar numbers on some networks that might be wiped out with the next financial crisis are meaningless.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#553

Post by thomascountz »

computerphage wrote: post #472
thomascountz wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Please go through each one again, taking special note of global warming and nuclear weapon development .

Why do you think global warming could kill literally every human being? What's the scenario in which that happens?

There's a lot to unpack with this, and I am not an expert, but: crop failure across industrial monocrops leads to food shortages, wild fires destroy significant areas which support pollinator ecologies, fresh water become contaminated by rising sea water and blighted by drought, and perhaps most significantly, as resources become strained, humans become desperate and armed conflict proliferates. This is just top of mind.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#554

Post by reducesuffering »

majormajor wrote: post #286
reducesuffering wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only assume the reasonable people at openai and anthropic were all pushed out long ago Typical uninformed take on the side of "doomers are crazy". Both CEO's of OpenAI, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, and many in their leadership, believe AGI has a very real probability of causing humanity's extinction. Both companies were founded upon this belief, it is at the core of the company. Only later were mercenaries hi…

If you're a doomer, wouldn't the "let's try to get there so fast" actions of the companies suggest that, in fact, there are no reasonable people in positions of influence there? By your own description neither Altman or Amodei are reasonable if their thought process goes: "this is an existential risk, give me hundreds of millions of dollars so I can accelerate it."

GP defined reasonable people as not believing in existential risk from AGI. I think the leadership and alignment teams are way more informed and reasonable than some of the very poorly thought through takes like GP just making things up about the labs. There’s just no evidence of it whereas lab leadership are operating under a mostly informed worldview.

Yes, I don’t think lab leadership are totally reasonable as they were concerned about the risks and yet lack of reason caused them to directly contribute to the problem we’re facing. They’re still not being reasonable when they throw their hands up at the arms race and hope the utopia come, when that’s not our trajectory at all and more lab employees are realizing it

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#555

Post by nullbio »

henryaj wrote: post #403
nullbio wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not the technology, the problem is the ideologues (Anthropic) who are steering the ship and the lack of decentralization and distribution of power. Your average Anthropic ideologue - including and most especially the main man himself - would love nothing more than to eradicate 9/10ths of the planet's population, pump the survivors full of memory wiping drugs, bury the existence of AI deep underground a…

What evidence do you have for any of this?

If you've been paying attention to Anthropic's behavior socially and as a company, there is an astronomical amount of evidence to support it.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#557

Post by Balinares »

pingou wrote: post #471
thomascountz wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Please go through each one again, taking special note of global warming and nuclear weapon development .

How is global warning gonna kill all of humanity? Even a full scale nuclear war wouldn't manage that. They could destroy most civilisations, culture and scientific achievements though.

Humans need food. Food does not just appear in supermarkets.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#558

Post by tyre »

matherial wrote: post #40

Unlike most other commenters, I applaud him for acting on his principles. If you sincerely believe that, of course you should act. You might not succeed, but your voice might be the one that tips the scales and starts a broader movement. This doesn't mean I agree with him. The fears of doomsday caused by rapid takeoff have been with us since day 1 and the mechanism is always basically "AI invents magic that sets it f…

There is simply too much money in it for almost every person at these companies to stop.

Leaving OAI or A\ would cost people millions, tens of millions, or more. And for what? So someone else can take your seat and do the same thing anyway?

If you're smart enough to get a job there, you're smart enough to be able to talk yourself into why it makes sense for you to stay.

Huge kudos to people like this who make the hard choice against the easy way out.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#559

Post by MisterMunchkin »

emtel wrote: post #440
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ 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…

Do you think people should continue developing AI up until the point that there is evidence that AI is facilitating biological weapons development? I think we should stop before then. But that necessarily means that there will not be evidence at the time that we stop.

If people were capable of making biological weapons they would already be making them.

Terrorists are so incompetent that they buy bring kitchen knives into the street and just go mental on people. No random person is going to successfully mass produce and release a bioweapon.

China and Russia don’t need AI, they already make bioweapons.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#560

Post by nullbio »

AIorNot wrote: post #475
nullbio wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not the technology, the problem is the ideologues (Anthropic) who are steering the ship and the lack of decentralization and distribution of power. Your average Anthropic ideologue - including and most especially the main man himself - would love nothing more than to eradicate 9/10ths of the planet's population, pump the survivors full of memory wiping drugs, bury the existence of AI deep underground a…

All this just means that most AI Researchers and Techis are sci-fi geeks and might be getting a bit too invested in that season of Black Mirror, Neal Stephenson, Cyberpunk or whatever else has evil AI in it -which is to say, they are by and large all sci-fi geeks, who are notoriously unreliable about predicting the impact of tech in the future. Are LLMs really gonna kill us.. via inference runs? I hope I am not being…

I'm not a doomer. I despise the fear campaign they're pushing for regulatory capture. But the world is still going to be a very unbalanced and dangerous place if they're able to succeed in their goals of hoarding power for themselves above all others.
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