I’ve joined Anthropic • Hacker News Board

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#141

Post by baq » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

0123456789ABCDE wrote: post #134

prodigycorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't be surprised if he just becomes a glorified marketer for anthro. im also going to guess that whatever research he does would be free roam research that primarily serves to market the fact that claude was able to help perform the research. the visible stuff he's been working on has been mostly agent soft skills. off the top of my head is autoresearch and his the wiki knowledge stuff. nothing particularly gr…

> i know he's reading this now meanwhile in the real world: claude --permission-mode=auto --model=opus -p '/onboard --user=karpathy'

expectation: in the real world the CLI will be replaced by an agent prompt and to get to the shell you'll have to ask 'get me bash dammit'

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#142

Post by noufalibrahim » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

canada_dry wrote: post #60

prodigycorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't be surprised if he just becomes a glorified marketer for anthro. im also going to guess that whatever research he does would be free roam research that primarily serves to market the fact that claude was able to help perform the research. the visible stuff he's been working on has been mostly agent soft skills. off the top of my head is autoresearch and his the wiki knowledge stuff. nothing particularly gr…

> just becomes a glorified marketer That implies Karpathy is either dumb or desperate and he is neither of those by a long shot.

I don't think that's the parents implication.

Generally, when a "good" developer has a huge public presence and reputation, that's quite valuable to a company when they're competing in a tough space. Many a time, more so than the (very high) technical skill of the developer in question.

I've seen large funded companies gather good popular developers like pokemon cards and just have them go around give talks and write blog posts. It creates an aura around them which makes things like hiring, fund raising etc. much easier.

So, it's not really a statement about Karpathy himself. It's more about the company hiring him.

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#143

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

canada_dry wrote: post #60

prodigycorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't be surprised if he just becomes a glorified marketer for anthro. im also going to guess that whatever research he does would be free roam research that primarily serves to market the fact that claude was able to help perform the research. the visible stuff he's been working on has been mostly agent soft skills. off the top of my head is autoresearch and his the wiki knowledge stuff. nothing particularly gr…

> just becomes a glorified marketer That implies Karpathy is either dumb or desperate and he is neither of those by a long shot.

Andrej is a smart guy. You don't get into Stanford for grad school without that.

But he has always been known for his communication rather than his research. He got famous by putting out a (very well made) course on machine learning that was available to the public. Since graduating he hasn't exactly delivered on revolutionary new stuff at the businesses that employed him but he has continued to be extremely good at communicating thoughts about the current and future state of AI. Businesses want that and he knows that he can deliver that.

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#144

Post by shuckles » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

bilsbie wrote: post #24

He should have done his own lab. He seems like someone capable of it and might bring some unique ideas.

> He should have done his own lab Which raises the question: what can he do at Anthropic that he couldn't on his own?

He can be at the frontier while just having a regular job. Every other option is a lot more work.

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#145

Post by Dyympps » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

didnt he foreshadow this in a recent interview? lmao

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#146

Post by bcapchickadee » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

We can expect more "vibe coding", "summoning ghosts" like expressions in the future now officially from Anthropic. I need him to add more videos to his channel on agentic coding. Looks like that won't happen anytime soon.

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#147

Post by jpcompartir » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

Great person and great company

I hope he still gets to do some educative stuff on the side too

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#148

Post by foobiekr » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

canada_dry wrote: post #60

prodigycorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't be surprised if he just becomes a glorified marketer for anthro. im also going to guess that whatever research he does would be free roam research that primarily serves to market the fact that claude was able to help perform the research. the visible stuff he's been working on has been mostly agent soft skills. off the top of my head is autoresearch and his the wiki knowledge stuff. nothing particularly gr…

> just becomes a glorified marketer That implies Karpathy is either dumb or desperate and he is neither of those by a long shot.

Anyone who would voluntarily work for Musk when he went obviously has things going on that aren't great.

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#149

Post by Robdel12 » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

dwa3592 wrote: post #8

Karpathy is talented and to me he always seemed like someone who would be against building something like skynet. Anthropic is lucky to have him.

Which is funny because Anthropic is the SOTA that the DoD has been using for more than 2 years. They already have blood on their hands with helping the Iran attack. He joined it

Re: I’ve joined Anthropic

#150

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Tue, May 19, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

canada_dry wrote: post #60

prodigycorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't be surprised if he just becomes a glorified marketer for anthro. im also going to guess that whatever research he does would be free roam research that primarily serves to market the fact that claude was able to help perform the research. the visible stuff he's been working on has been mostly agent soft skills. off the top of my head is autoresearch and his the wiki knowledge stuff. nothing particularly gr…

> just becomes a glorified marketer That implies Karpathy is either dumb or desperate and he is neither of those by a long shot.

He already stated his motivation a few months ago in an interview with Dwarkesh - basically saying that he might join one of the big labs, for a while, to keep in touch with frontier research.

Andrej seems like a great guy, but him joining Anthropic feels a bit like a transactional relationship (rich old guy marries hot young chick). Anthropic get a "glorified marketer", and he gets a front row seat at SOTA LLM dev 2026. I don't think they hired him expecting he's going to change the direction/pace of their research.