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I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

dwarkesh.com

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Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#111

Post by kelnos »

ang_cire wrote: post #82
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

The difference is that China's slavery and genocide is happening today, within its own borders.

Is that true of the US? Is there state-sanctioned/supported slavery in the US? Is the US committing genocide within its own borders? Arguably not?

This doesn't make the US perfect or wonderful. We've been politically and militarily supporting a genocide in Gaza, as a stark example.

But "the US did slavery and genocide in the past" and "China is doing slavery and genocide now" doesn't make the US and China equivalent today.

And on top of that, I can go out and protest my country supporting Israel's garbage in Gaza. If I were a Chinese citizen and tried to do something like that in China, I'd be jailed.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#112

Post by cuuupid »

ks2048 wrote: post #88
ang_cire wrote: post #43

The 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…

People who buy the USA-vs-China race to a specific goal - do they really believe if China gets "AGI" first, they will immediately try to conquer the USA? How exactly will that go?

It's more likely they will continue expansionist policy in Asia which counters several American diplomatic goals:

1. Democracy and freedom worldwide

2. Economic access+prosperity with Asia

3. Pro-American sentiment

(Not in order of importance, which shifts constantly)

I think assuming China would beat the US in conventional war if they reach 'AGI' first is a stretch, even if this actually grants them a force advantage it's not like the US can no longer reach AGI. The risk is really more that if they reach 'AGI' and subsequently a force advantage, that they would no longer be deterred and more decisively move on Taiwan next year. Taiwan is key to [1] and [2] above.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#113

Post by nitwit005 »

abcde666777 wrote: post #66

"Within 20 years 99% of the military will be AIs" That smells like such a baseless speculation that from the get go I'm not convinced of the author's rigor.

I went a bit further and then gave up on the piece. Unfortunate, as the premise seemed interesting.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#114

Post by ang_cire »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #91
ang_cire wrote: post #43

The 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…

You didn’t find this part naive? > But within 20 years, 99% of the workforce in the military, the government, and the private sector will be AIs. This includes the soldiers (by which I mean the robot armies), the superhumanly intelligent advisors and engineers, the police, you name it.

Frankly, I find that less 'naive' than I do 'dangerously possible'.

Autonomous weaponry is one of the few ways that a fascist state could reasonably maintain violent control over a large and hostile populace.

I guarantee Trump would rather have perfectly obedient killbots than critically thinking soldiers, or even just the 5 murderous assholes required to oversee tasking for 1000 semi-autonomous police drones.

The least plausible part is the private sector, which just doesn't work that way.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#115

Post by brandall10 »

cushychicken wrote: post #63
Readerium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes he is room-mates with.

Love the interviews Dwarkesh sponsored with Sarah Paine from the Naval War College. Also, somewhat spitefully, find it funny that he has multiple roommates.

I'm assuming he's in some sort of high-end communal housing, a trend that began emerging in SF ~15 years back ... ie. where multi-millionaire startup founders and the like choose it on purpose for the synergistic benefits.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#116

Post by kelnos »

ang_cire wrote: post #65
margalabargala wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

I know people IRL that are so fed up with the US's bullshit that they do sometimes look at China and think their dominance might be better for the world. "Well, when's the last time China started a war or even deployed military forces in another country?", they ask... and I don't know how to respond to that (because they haven't, for at least 30 years that I can think of). And saying something like "well, they've been expanding their territory through extralegal means, and use coercion and grey-area tactics to get what they want" feels like an unsatisfying retort.

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#117

Post by cuuupid »

possibleworlds wrote: post #104
elAhmo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy.

Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys".

The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#119

Post by cuuupid »

alecco wrote: post #18

But the "Anthropic fight" is mostly fake. Palantir was using Claude as base model. Anthropic allegedly took issue with unsupervised kills because the technology wasn't ready (or something along the lines). Also, I remember reading this guy has close ties to Anthropic. Also, I find it suspicious how he came to prominence out of nowhere. Like Big Tech and the establishment are propping podcasts of controlled narrative/…

It's entirely fake, sure Palantir uses Claude, but it takes about 10 minutes to pull all their federal contracts and realize the little involvement they have in the kill chain is preliminary

Re: I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

#120

Post by kelnos »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #98
andyferris wrote: post #92

> So what’s the Pentagon’s plan — to coerce and threaten to destroy every single company that won’t give them what they want on exactly their terms? I mean... isn't that pretty much the way the current administration behaves in general? If the answer to this question is "yes", and the US executive does not in fact share the values of the author about free and open society, then the rest of the article is kinda moot (…

The administration believes that rights, in this case the right of corporate existence, are granted by the state. This is opposed to the liberal conception that rights are a product of natural existence - an essential feature of being.

The right of corporate existence is granted (or at least regulated, heavily) by the state.

This administration believes that they don't need to treat all businesses equally under the law, and can use strong-arm intimidation tactics to get what they want. That is the problem.

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