Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

djnn.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 349 posts

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#261

Post by NewsaHackO »

antonvs wrote: post #238
lijok wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> They hired a teenager to run one of their departments Except they didn’t. The person in question was 28 when they hired him. He was a teenager when he cofounded the company that was acquired for thirty billion dollars. But the taste of those really sour grapes must be hard to deal with.

I could not imagine being as salty as the original poster seems to be about Alex Wang. To hold that amount of hate for a superior that is more successful than you can’t be good for the soul

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#262

Post by semiinfinitely »

KaiserPro wrote: post #28

When I worked at a FAANG with a "world leading" AI lab (now run by a teenage data labeller) as an SRE/sysadmin I was asked to use a modified version of a foundation model which was steered towards infosec stuff. We were asked to try and persuade it to help us hack into a mock printer/dodgy linux box. It helped a little, but it wasn't all that helpful. but in terms of coordination, I can't see how it would be useful.…

meta was never "world leading"

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#263

Post by mrtesthah »

skybrian wrote: post #205
jmkni wrote: post #58

That whole article felt like "Claude is so good Chinese hackers are using it for espionage" marketing fluff tbh

If we’re sharing vibes, “our product is dangerous” seems like an unusual sales tactic outside the defense industry. I’m doubtful that’s how it works? Meanwhile, another reason to make a press release is that you’ll be criticized for the coverup if you don’t. Also, it puts other companies on notice that maybe they should look for this?

The bulk of OpenAI and Anthropic’s statements about doomsday AGI and AI safety in general also present the company as sole ethical gatekeeper of the technology, whom we must trust and protect lest its unscrupulous rivals win the AI race. So this article is very much in line with that marketing strategy.

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#264

Post by [deleted] »

torben-friis wrote: post #4

Does Anthropic currently have cybersec people able to provide a standard assessment of the kind the community expects? This could be a corporate move as some people claim, but I wonder if the cause is simply that their talents are currently somewhere else and they don’t have the company structure in place to deliver properly in this matter. (If that is the case they are not then free of blame, it’s just a different c…

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#265

Post by qzzi »

notpublic wrote: post #113
delusional wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't talk about the implausibility of the the tool to do the stated task. It talks the report, and how it doesn't have any details to make us believe the tool did the task. Maybe the thing they are describing could happen. That doesn't mean we have any evidence that it did.

If you know what to look for, the report actually has quite a few details on how they did it. In fact, when the report came out, all it did was confirm my suspicions.

I've been hacking professionally for 30 years and I know what to look for. Anthropic's report is garbage. Period.

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#266

Post by spopejoy »

dangus wrote: post #189
JKCalhoun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair. If the actor (and it's a Chinese state actor here) is what is being questioned as "bullshit" then that should be the discourse in the article and in this thread. Instead the lack of a paper trail from Anthropic seems to be having people questioning the whole event?

State sponsorship can include the state looking the other way.

Not really? APTs would seem to be either criminal enterprises or state-sponsored because SOMEBODY has to be paying the big bucks.

So yes, probably 100% of criminal enterprises are paying off officials, but if that's the definition of "state sponsored" then the term loses any meaning.

EDIT I guess there's also "legit" businesses like Palantir/NSO group, but I would argue any firm like that is effectively state-sponsored as they are usually revolving doors with NSA-type agencies, the military etc.

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#267

Post by wonnage »

AstroBen wrote: post #166
gpi wrote: post #131

The below amendment from the anthropic blog page is telling. Edited November 14 2025: Added an additional hyperlink to the full report in the initial section Corrected an error about the speed of the attack: not "thousands of requests per second" but "thousands of requests, often multiple per second"

There is absolutely no way a technical person would mix those up

But what about an ML person roped into writing an AI assisted blogpost about security

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#268

Post by cadamsdotcom »

KaiserPro wrote: post #28

When I worked at a FAANG with a "world leading" AI lab (now run by a teenage data labeller) as an SRE/sysadmin I was asked to use a modified version of a foundation model which was steered towards infosec stuff. We were asked to try and persuade it to help us hack into a mock printer/dodgy linux box. It helped a little, but it wasn't all that helpful. but in terms of coordination, I can't see how it would be useful.…

I think the high order bit here is you were working with models from previous generations.

In other words, since the latest generation of models have greater capabilities the story might be very different today.

Re: Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

#270

Post by Barrin92 »

skybrian wrote: post #205
jmkni wrote: post #58

That whole article felt like "Claude is so good Chinese hackers are using it for espionage" marketing fluff tbh

If we’re sharing vibes, “our product is dangerous” seems like an unusual sales tactic outside the defense industry. I’m doubtful that’s how it works? Meanwhile, another reason to make a press release is that you’ll be criticized for the coverup if you don’t. Also, it puts other companies on notice that maybe they should look for this?

>unusual sales tactic outside the defense industry. I’m doubtful that’s how it works?

given the valuation and money these companies burn through marketing wise they basically need to play by the same logic as defense companies. They're all running on "we're reinventing the world and building god" to justify their spending, "here's a chatbot (like 20 other ones) that going to make you marginally more productive" isn't really going to cut it at this point, they're in too deep

Post reply on HN