Lots of wank about muh democratic vs authoritarian values, at the end of the day, US DoD/DoW affiliated AI will 100% kill people, sooner than later and US AI researchers will have to grasp with that. I want to charitably say eventually, but as events show, inevitably, within the calendar year... current quarter, 100s children will die because of US AI in actions most of US do not support. One can argue AI will enable more selective targets, or there will simply be more targets, and given US behavior there will always be targets. Meanwhile PRC AI researcher's work might end up murdering children... someday, and even then most likely in a war / reunification / rejuvenation project that most of Chinese support. Until then, the side not blowing up kids is going to sleep more soundly.
I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
101–110 of 237 posts
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#102My attitude towards democracy has worsened since AI.
The problem with democracy is that it can easily become a revolving door wherein capital holders can choose which candidates are allowed to approach the door.
I think democracy works well when the monetary system is constrained; for example on gold or other scarce asset because that creates a better separation between money and state because then there would be less of an incentive for big companies to corrupt the revolving door to gain a financial advantage.
In a monetary system where the government can create an unlimited amount of money, the incentive to corrupt the government and political process keeps increasing.
I think democracy with a soft fiat money system is probably the most dangerous system because any moral objection can be filtered out of the running as we saw happen with Anthropic and the Department of War. It's because clearly it's the weapon manufacturers running that department behind the scenes; they have a huge financial interest to do so. The Department of War is the bread and butter of weapon manufacturers and defense contractors.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add to that all the military posturing over Taiwan and it's clear that it's not "China doesn't do what the US does", it's "China hasn't done it...yet." The idea that anyone would be better off with China supplanting the US is asinine. This is the same government that committed the Tiananmen square massacre and still doesn't acknowledge that anything happened.
I don't see anyone arguing that we'd be better off with China, but I am arguing that neither the US or China can be trusted with this, so the author positing "US AI dominance good to keep China at bay" is bad.
You quoted the article:
> The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race?
Right now there are two contenders for first in the AI race. The US, and China.
You spent the rest of your comment making the case that it is not good for the US to win. Implying, though not directly saying, we would be better off with China.
You can say "oh wouldn't it be nice if Europe won instead" but they don't have anything in the race right now. We're stuck with the US or China.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#104The author is naive. > The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race? It’s because we want to make sure free open societies can defend themselves. We don’t want the winner of the AI race to be a government which operates on the principle that there is no such thing as a truly private company or a private c…
Great take. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. Many of these things have been happening for years, but war crimes, disregard for international law, blackmailing allies, killing their own citizens without accountability, and allowing foreign governments to heavily influence policy are all troubling signs. It’s easy to point to China a…
> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way.
More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore An observation one can make when comparing a republic with the rule of law to one that ain’t, whether across time or geography. There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing.
> There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing. The American 'experiment' is one long history of the US doing really horrible things, but giving ourselves a pass because we dress it up in the name of freedom and self-determination. If you ignore our slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, it's easy to paint China's slavery and genocide as evils that are unique somehow. The…
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Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower. Just like being a billionaire (or, super-wealther, if you will), you don't get to be a superpower by doing good things. China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting.
This is both (1) not necessarily true -- there's no first-principles reason why being powerful implies being unethical -- and (2) deeply pessimistic and defeatist. You can apply whataboutism and say that everyone's equally bad, but I assure you that there's a pretty big difference, even down to your quality life, between the types of systems you choose to participate in.
It's not pessimistic or defeatist; you first have to recognize the limitations and failure modes of your system before you can think about changing it.
Is it possible to live in a world where powerful entities have gotten there through ethical means? Sure. We don't live in that world, though.
And yes, if I said "name me one powerful person/entity that got there through ethical means", I'm sure you could give me a name. But that name would surely be an outlier.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#107One thing I’ve never heard a good answer to: If Anthropic is a supplier not to the Department of Defense itself, but to Palantir, why isn’t supply chain risk the proper designation (assuming the government’s concerns with Anthropic having authority over military missions is valid)? As for whether code written with Claude Code should be so considered - if it’s just code that is subject to human review, I would argue t…
I'm not sure that "supply chain risk" is even the right term to be discussing.
What Hegseth/Trump want to do is not just stop Anthropic models from being used by any military supplier pursuant to goods/services they are providing to the military, but rather say that if you do business with the military then you must not use Anthropic at all, even if that usage is entirely unrelated to your military contracts.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter what you know so much as who you know. Networking is the most precious currency. He met the right people, got the right guests, and surfed a wave of fortunate occurrences. He was roommates with Dylan Patel of TheIjnformation, and John Y of Asionometry, and has since developed a wide range of high level industry contacts. Sometimes people succeed without earning it, and what matters is what they do w…
I might be old, but he strikes me as a shallow valley Bro. His CV has nothing of significance. But he had a lot of Big Tech guests and even that Navy intelligence woman. He got a boost by being endorsed by Bezos. It smells of BS to me. Again, maybe I'm just a grumpy greybeard and this is a Gen Z thing.
I'm also a grumpy greybeard - but I've got nothing but respect for him grinding out some good podcasts and then being in the right place and right time to capitalize on connections. I see a lot of skepticism directed his way, but I view it as a lot like early dotcom winners. Catch the right wave and it's like winning the lottery, success far beyond what you'd normally be able to reach, and then you get the opportunity to show whether you can keep it or not. I appreciate a good success story, and it's awesome to see people win by catching a wave, and then hold on to it, showing that they can keep doing it at a higher level.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? History is a graveyard of experiments that thought they were the exception to the rule.
> Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? These aren’t mutually exclusive. The world is better off for Athens and the Roman and Harrapan and Haudenosaunee republics. (Book request: history of the republic. I’ve struggled to find one.) The CCP with internal elections was interesting and a genuine riposte to broadly-enfranchised r…
But we are not talking about china.
Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Love the interviews Dwarkesh sponsored with Sarah Paine from the Naval War College. Also, somewhat spitefully, find it funny that he has multiple roommates.
Those ones were a bit on the nose, no?
How so? I enjoyed them, keeping in mind that the lecturer was a professor at a US naval war college.