Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#201

Post by latexr » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #175

latexr wrote: post #151

> “We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models,” How magnanimous! They are only thinking of others, you see. They are rejecting their safety pledge for you . > “We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments … if competitors are blazing ahead.” Oops, said the quiet part out loud that it’s all about money. “I mean, if al…

> Oops, said the quiet part out loud that it’s all about money. “I mean, if all of our competitors are kicking puppies in the face, it doesn’t make sense for us to not do it too. Maybe we’ll also kick kittens while we’re at it”. I mean, yes, that is actually how world works. That is why we need safety, environmental and other anti-fraud regulations. Because without them, competition makes it so that every successful…

> I mean, yes, that is actually how world works.

And soon enough, it won’t work at all because of it.

> Those who wont will be taken over by those who do.

And if you compromise on your core values because of money, they weren’t core values to begin with¹. “I want to be ethical but if I am I won’t get to be a billionaire” isn’t an excuse. We shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders at what we see as wrong because “everybody does it” or “that’s just business” or “that’s life”. Complacency and apologists are how a bad system remains bad.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

¹ I’m willing to give leeway to individuals. You can believe stealing is wrong but if you’re desperate and steal a loaf of bread to feed your kid, there’s nuance. A VC-backed company is something entirely different.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#202

Post by hsuduebc2 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:10 PM UTC

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #8

What an interesting week to drop the safety pledge. This is how all of these companies work. They’ll follow some ethical code or register as a PBC until that undermined profits. These companies are clearly aiming at cheapening the value of white collar labor. Ask yourself: will they steward us into that era ethically? Or will they race to transfer wealth from American workers to their respective shareholders?

When I see slogans like Google’s “Don’t be evil,” it always comes to mind that when it stopped being useful, they shifted to something like “Do the right thing.”

It’s important to remember that a company’s primary purpose is profit, especially when it’s accountable to shareholders. That isn’t inherently bad, but the occasional moral posturing used to serve that goal can be irritating.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#203

Post by ryanackley » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #8

What an interesting week to drop the safety pledge. This is how all of these companies work. They’ll follow some ethical code or register as a PBC until that undermined profits. These companies are clearly aiming at cheapening the value of white collar labor. Ask yourself: will they steward us into that era ethically? Or will they race to transfer wealth from American workers to their respective shareholders?

If they tank the white-collar middle class, there won't be anyone to buy the goods and services their potential AI customers will be trying to sell.

It's like a snake eating its own tail.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#204

Post by ifwinterco » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

zaphirplane wrote: post #136

ifwinterco wrote: post #132

The whole "safety" debate was always nonsense and I'm not sure how so many people got caught up in it. The US is not the only country in the world so the idea that humanity as a whole could somehow regulate this process seemed silly to me. Even if you got the whole US tech community and the US government on board, there are 6.7bn other people in the world working in unrelated systems, enough of whom are very smart

When the leading 5 models are from the US then yes enforced safety makes a difference because they are ahead of the curve. Now when the 10th model can be a danger then your case is true. What would safety applied to the leading 3 mean to you anyways ?

Even if US labs are currently in the lead (which they are), in the hypothetical scenario where we're close to AGI, it wouldn't take too long (years - decades at most) for other people to catch up, especially given a lot of the researchers etc. are not originally from the US.

So the stated concern of the west coast tech bros that we're close to some misaligned AGI apocalypse would be slightly delayed, but in the grand scheme of things it would make no difference

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#205

Post by arnvald » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

Any pledges/values/principles that are abandoned as soon as it becomes difficult to keep them, are just marketing. This is just the next item on the list.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#206

Post by nradov » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

ahtihn wrote: post #88

nradov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a total non sequitur. If you think the military is being tasked with the wrong missions, or too many missions, then take that up with the civilian political leadership. But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Personally I favor a less interventionist foreign policy. But that change can only come about through the political process, not by unaccountable corporate e…

> But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Of course it is. Think about it this way: if you could guarantee that the military suffers no human losses when attacking a foreign country, do you think that's going to more or less foreign interventions? The tools available to the military influence policy, these things are linked. US military is already overwhelmingly powerful…

That's so delusional. The US military is currently preparing for a potential conflict with China to stop an invasion with Taiwan. They don't have anything near "overwhelming force" for that mission: recent simulations put it about even at best. People who believe they don't need any improved autonomous weapons are simply uninformed.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#207

Post by ozmodiar » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #22

chris_money202 wrote: post #11

First they rushed a model to market without safety checks, and I said nothing. It wasn't my field. Then they ignored the researchers warning about what it could do, and I said nothing. It sounded like science fiction. Then they gave it control of things that matter, power grids, hospitals, weapons, and I said nothing. It seemed to be working fine. Then something went wrong, and no one knew how to stop it, no one had…

> Then something went wrong, and no one knew how to stop it, This is the problem with every AI safety scenario like this. It has a level of detachment from reality that is frankly stark. If linesman stop showing up to work for a week, the power goes out. The US has show that people with "high powered" rifles can shut down the grid. We are far far away from a sort of world where turning AI off is a problem. There isnt…

AI's approach: * User has history of anti AI rhetoric, increasingly agitated and unstable. * User has removed all phones and cellular connections from their car. Increase monitoring through surveillance cameras and monitoring of their social groups. * User has been spotted making unusual travel choices moving towards key infrastructure - deploy interception measures.

We already have the tech to do all of that. A rifle isn't going to help against AI. Or for the linesman:

* Employee required for critical infrastructure has been identified to hold unaligned political beliefs. Replace with more pliable individual and move to low impact location.

No one who wants to bring down an AI like this would ever be able to get close to it, even if it lived in only one data center. You could try hiding all your communications, but then it will just consider you a likely agitator anyway. That's the risk of unaccountable mass surveillance (the only kind that's ever existed). Doesn't really matter if there's a person on top or not.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#208

Post by nsbk » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #151

> “We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models,” How magnanimous! They are only thinking of others, you see. They are rejecting their safety pledge for you . > “We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments … if competitors are blazing ahead.” Oops, said the quiet part out loud that it’s all about money. “I mean, if al…

Since it is all about money, I just did vote with my wallet and cancelled the Max subscription

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#209

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

ozmodiar wrote: post #195

rco8786 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this. It's unfortunate that anthropic dropped this and it's also exactly how the system is supposed to work. Companies don't regulate themselves, the government regulates the companies. Now, you may notice that the government is also choosing not to regulate these companies...which is another matter altogether.

It's so much worse than that. The government actively encourages a lack of business ethics. Heck, it started the term with a crypto rug pull. Money continues to funnel upward to all the worst players, and watchdogs are being targeted and destroyed. Even if you get new people in power, you're going to find the upper echelons completely full of outlandishly wealthy, morally bankrupt individuals that are very politicall…

> Heck, it started the term with a crypto rug pull

If you ask me... that wasn't a rug pull, at least not in the intent - it more was a way for foreign actors to funnel money directly to Trump and his family without any trace.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#210

Post by moron4hire » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #184

lebovic wrote: post #156

I used to work at Anthropic. I fully believe that the folks mentioned in the article, like Jared Kaplan, are well-intentioned and concerned about the relationship between safety research and frontier capabilities – not purely profit. That said, I'm not thrilled about this. I joined Anthropic with the impression that the responsible scaling policy was a binding pre-commitment for exactly this scenario: they wouldn't s…

> I hope they're willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. that's about as naive as it can be. if they have any values left at all (which I hope they have) them not being at the table with labs which don't have any left is much worse than them being there and having a chance to influence at least with the leftovers. that said, of course money > all else.

This is a common logical fallacy. It's not true that the party A with a few values can influence the party B with no values. It's only ever the case that party B fully drags party A to the no-values side. See also: employees who rationalize staying at companies running unethical or illegal projects.