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Did Anthropic ask for this?

verysane.ai

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Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#161

Post by ianm218 »

NickNaraghi wrote: post #149
ianm218 wrote: post #15

What I feel like is missing in the common discourse here is that Anthropic genuinely believes that AI poses an existential risk for humanity either in terms of literal survival or extreme mass surveillance, human disempowerment etc. So if you take these risks seriously, which the median commentor on HN obviously doesn't, what is the right thing to do? I.e. OpenAI just went full evil corpo mode and went all in on the…

Super interesting. How does regulation affect IPO prospects of OAI and ANTH? What’s the timing of each?

Both companies business case is currently on being at the frontier so this is definitely bearish. OpenAI seems likely to use this to become the preferred lab of the government and maybe have them take a stake, so maybe they will succeed with regulatory capture.

Not like I have any inside info.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#162

Post by i67vw3 »

dannyw wrote: post #109
CamperBob2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem Anthropic faces isn't implementing a KYC workflow, but the fact that many if not most of their own employees are no longer allowed to work on Fable/Mythos.

Also their API customers and downstream customers (e.g. Cursor users) would also need similar infra, and probably a decent amount of users would just choose another model that doesn't require ID & an immigration status check. And API is much more profitable (relatively) than subscribers for them.

I think it will atleast take one month to set up correct flow for user authentication for both their subscribers and for API's (Cursor etc).

Others are thinking such a export control ban is good for them as it shows entire world Anthropic models are best, I disagree. It will wreck the company, IPO considerations etc, when the models may be best but their are no users to use them.

If such an export control ban stays in place for this particular model or future models of Anthropic, revenue will be affected. My guesss is around 50% of subscribers are non-US citizens, meaning direct 50% revenue loss.

Altman/Musk used to also do moral superiority, "Dangers of AI", lobbying to ban "non-safe" models etc. But they largely stopped doing it after 2025. While Anthropic/Dario increased the intensity of moral authority, and got hit back with exactly they were asking for.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#163

Post by pu_pe »

The Amodei quote they use is illuminating:

"The government should have the power to block or deter deployment of the model if it is determined, in light of third-party assessment, to present unacceptable risks. This power must be scoped to the above four specific risks and there must be protective measures against political favoritism or arbitrary decisions."

The article uses this as a gotcha, but I think there is nuance here. Amazon is a competitor, not an officially appointed third-party that can assess anything. And while Amodei says government oversight is needed, I think it's fair to say we would all expect something more rigorous and neutral than getting a phone call on a Friday based on vibes.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#164

Post by d1sxeyes »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #99
zmmmmm wrote: post #74

I think it's a near universal phenomenon that people with extraordinary amounts of power become victims of their own hubris. Once you get sufficiently decoupled from the consequences of your own actions, it is near impossible to tether yourself to a calibrated sense of reality. So I genuinely think that Amodei thought here that he was building a moat - set a very high bar for safety at exactly the line Anthropic but…

> I am sure they calculated in the possibility of their own model being restricted. Doubt. Had they foreseen this, they would have started verifying the identity of their customers. That would have allowed them to keep their US customers when the US government banned foreign persons from accessing Fable. Since they were forced to turn off Fable for everyone , it follows that they were not prepared for that possibilit…

Unless, conspiracy hat on, they wanted to be prevented from serving Fable because it's too expensive for them to run, and they want some external authority to blame for shutting down access.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#165

Post by sam_lowry_ »

Everyone looks bad in this story:

Anthropic for lying too much and for too long about their capabilities

US Government for taking these marketing stunts for ground truth

EU for freaking out about its Digital Sovereignty over US companies, as if it had it before.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#166

Post by estearum »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #134
estearum wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but you have forgotten that HN is full of people who are so aloof and "above the fray" (compliments to their raw intellect, of course) that it would be beneath them to consider the realities of the political situation.

I just think that it's dodging the question in this case. It's true that the US government is run by crooks who'd all be serving prison sentences in a just world, and that they'd certainly do whatever Anthropic wants in exchange for a sufficiently large bribe. But the US government also serves a number of important roles in American society that we can't simply turn off and come back to in 2029.

It's not dodging the question. GP's comment says that one should consider the possibility. Essentially that we should follow what several federal courts have been doing and cease offering the government the "presumption of regularity" in its conduct.

People are referencing David Sacks as an impartial government authority about 2 weeks after he went on a tirade against Bernie Sanders for some type of nationalization of AI, and then went completely radio silent when his own boss suggested the same thing a week later.

There is no political appointee in our government – not one – who can be afforded the presumption of regularity.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#169

Post by ianm218 »

weitendorf wrote: post #159
ianm218 wrote: post #15

What I feel like is missing in the common discourse here is that Anthropic genuinely believes that AI poses an existential risk for humanity either in terms of literal survival or extreme mass surveillance, human disempowerment etc. So if you take these risks seriously, which the median commentor on HN obviously doesn't, what is the right thing to do? I.e. OpenAI just went full evil corpo mode and went all in on the…

Work on distributed/federated learning. The main doomsday scenario is exactly what Anthropic is enabling. RSI within a top-down, concentrated power structure creates an unstable equilibrium and will instantly devolve into an epic power struggle. If you control the company/computers/military with the one most powerful thing, you control everything else. It will probably just be seized but then you instantly become a t…

I think this is a cool angle to pursue! But your model of the world definitely has a lot of assumptions here.

> RSI within a top-down, concentrated power structure creates an unstable equilibrium and will instantly devolve into an epic power struggle. If you control the company/computers/military with the one most powerful thing, you control everything else

With a more stable government you can definitely imagine a situation where someone like Anthropic would work closely with the government in a Manhattan style project to solve alignment as soon as RSI is close. This admin definitely has a more "might makes right" view of the world and I'm not sure they would go that direction.

Re: Did Anthropic ask for this?

#170

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

estearum wrote: post #166
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just think that it's dodging the question in this case. It's true that the US government is run by crooks who'd all be serving prison sentences in a just world, and that they'd certainly do whatever Anthropic wants in exchange for a sufficiently large bribe. But the US government also serves a number of important roles in American society that we can't simply turn off and come back to in 2029.

It's not dodging the question. GP's comment says that one should consider the possibility. Essentially that we should follow what several federal courts have been doing and cease offering the government the "presumption of regularity" in its conduct. People are referencing David Sacks as an impartial government authority about 2 weeks after he went on a tirade against Bernie Sanders for some type of nationalization o…

One should consider the possibility, but it doesn’t seem to me that the comments are full of people who haven’t. I think David Sacks is a hypocritical Trumpist, valuing his own pocketbook above all else and seeing his political connections as key to maintaining it. His perspective is valuable not because it’s impartial, but because it illustrates how hypocritical Trumpists see this very important issue with which we’re faced.
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