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

Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 716 posts

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#431

Post by francisofascii »

shubhamjain wrote: post #352

I was wondering if it was because of heavy-handedness of the administration, but apparently: > The policy change is separate and unrelated to Anthropic’s discussions with the Pentagon, according to a source familiar with the matter. Their core argument is that if we have guardrails that others don't, they would be left behind in controlling the technology, and they are the "responsible ones." I honestly can't compreh…

It is a "reasonable" argument to keep yourself in the game, but it is sad nonetheless. You sacrifice your morals and do bad things, so if things get way worse, maybe you will be in a position to stop something from really bad from happening. Of course, you might just end up participating in the really bad thing.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#432

Post by ACCount37 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #352

I was wondering if it was because of heavy-handedness of the administration, but apparently: > The policy change is separate and unrelated to Anthropic’s discussions with the Pentagon, according to a source familiar with the matter. Their core argument is that if we have guardrails that others don't, they would be left behind in controlling the technology, and they are the "responsible ones." I honestly can't compreh…

That's because it is.

AI is powerful and AI is perilous. Those two aren't mutually exclusive. Those follow directly from the same premise.

If AI tech goes very well, it can be the greatest invention of all human history. If AI tech goes very poorly, it can be the end of human history.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#433

Post by [deleted] »

shubhamjain wrote: post #352

I was wondering if it was because of heavy-handedness of the administration, but apparently: > The policy change is separate and unrelated to Anthropic’s discussions with the Pentagon, according to a source familiar with the matter. Their core argument is that if we have guardrails that others don't, they would be left behind in controlling the technology, and they are the "responsible ones." I honestly can't compreh…

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#434

Post by sigbottle »

There's one tweet from the the blog a few days ago (astral something?) that sums up my view of the problem pretty well.

General population: How will AI get to the point where it destroys humanity?

Yudkowsky: [insert some complicated argument about instrumented convergence and deception]

The government: because we told you to.

Again, not saying that AI is useless or anything. Just that we're more likely to cause our own downfall with weaker AI, than some abstract super AGI. The bar for mass destruction and oppression is lower than the bar for what we typically think of as intelligence for the benefit for humanity ( with the right systems in place, current AI systems are more than enough to get the job done - hence why the Pentagon wants it so bad...)

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#436

Post by adverbly »

ndr wrote: post #351

Worth checking this post from someone who actually has worked on this change: > I take significant responsibility for this change. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HzKuzrKfaDJvQqmjh/responsibl...

Did this guy actually write this?

Incredibly long and verbose. I will fall short of accusing him of using an AI to generate slop, but whatever happened to people's ability to make short, strong, simple arguments?

If you can't communicate the essence of an argument in a short and simple way, you probably don't understand it in great depth, and clearly don't care about actually convincing anybody because Lord knows nobody is going to RTFA when it's that long...

At best, you're just trying to communicate to academics who are used to reading papers... Need to expect better from these people if we want to actually improve the world... Standards need to be higher.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#437

Post by don-code »

lp4v4n wrote: post #348
pjmlp wrote: post #334

Always the same "Do no evil" tragedy, don't believe in corporations.

What about "It's free and always will be"?

There was an article a few years ago here on HN about "can't be evil" business models, which used Costco as an example. As soon as Costco turns evil, it stops working. https://www.bryanlehrer.com/entries/costco/

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#438

Post by shafyy »

jdross wrote: post #358
shubhamjain wrote: post #352

I was wondering if it was because of heavy-handedness of the administration, but apparently: > The policy change is separate and unrelated to Anthropic’s discussions with the Pentagon, according to a source familiar with the matter. Their core argument is that if we have guardrails that others don't, they would be left behind in controlling the technology, and they are the "responsible ones." I honestly can't compreh…

Would nuclear energy research be a good analogy then? Seems like a path we should have kept running down, but stopped bc of the weapons. So we got the weapons but not the humanity saving parts (infinite clean energy)

It's a path we should have never started going down.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#439

Post by nozzlegear »

logicallee wrote: post #413
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #325

Public benefit corporations in the AI space have become a farce at this point. They're just regular corporations wearing a different hat, driven by the same money dynamics as any other corp. They have no ability to balance their stated "mission" with their drive for profit. When being "evil" is profitable and not-evil is not, guess which road they'll take...

>Public benefit corporations in the AI space have become a farce at this point. They're just regular corporations wearing a different hat, driven by the same money dynamics as any other corp. Could you describe the model that you think might work well?

It sounds like OP thinks AI companies should just stop pretending that they care about the public benefit, and be corporations from the start. Skip the hand wringing and the will they/wont they betray their ethics phases entirely since everyone knows they're going to choose profit over public benefit every time.

That model already exists and has worked well for decades. It's called being a regular ass corporation.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#440

Post by shafyy »

jkestner wrote: post #359
coldtea wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general public benefit corporations and non-profits should have a very modest salary cap for everybody involved and specific public-benefit legally binding mission statements. Anybody involved should also be prohibited from starting a private company using their IP and catering to the same domain for 5-10 years after they leave. Non-profits where the CEO makes millions or billions are a joke. And if e.g. your miss…

It’s not the CEO’s fault - they had to take all that money to keep their org a non-profit. B corps are like recycling programs, a nice logo.

Are you saying that recycling is a scam?
Post reply on HN