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Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

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Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#91

Post by dannersy »

ashtonshears wrote: post #23
goranmoomin wrote: post #18

TBH I am sad that Anthropic is changing its stance, but in the current world, if you even care about LLM safety, I feel that this is the right choice — there’s too many model providers and they probably don’t consider safety as high priority as Anthropic. (Yes that might change, they can get pressurized by the govt, yada yada, but they literally created their own company because of AI safety, I do think they actually…

Do you work at Anthropic, or know people who do? I genuinly curious why they are so holy to you, when to me I see just another tech company trying to make cash Edit: Reading some of the linked articles, I can see how Anthropic CEO is refusing to allow their product for warfare (killing humans), which is probably a good thing that resonates with supporting them

Let us not pretend that they won't be used for war eventually. If they cave immediately under pressure, then this is an inevitably.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#92

Post by radlad »

nradov wrote: post #83
yunwal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the US military we’re talking about so 95% of what they do is attacking people for oil. They don’t “need” more of anything, they’re funded to the tune of a trillion dollars a year, almost as much as every other military in the world combined. What holy mission do you think they’re going to carry out with the assistance of LLMs?

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…

> 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.

It is an ethical dilemma: believing an armed force will act unethically is in fact a valid reason to refuse to arm them. You are taking a nationalistic view regarding the worth of life.

And if you believe it is unethical to arm them, it is rational to use whatever leverage you have available to you - such as refusing to sell your company's product.

Furthermore, one of the two points at issue was regarding surveiling civilians.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#93

Post by EagnaIonat »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #16

Related: Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587

It's part of the overall story.

The safeguards dropped are when they will release a model or not based on safety.

The Friday deadline is to allow to use their products for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems without a human in the loop.

Anthropic hasn't backed down on those, yet. But they are in a bad situation either way.

If they don't back down, they lose US government contracts, the government gets to do what it wants anyway. It also puts them in a dangerous position with non-governmental bodies.

If they give into the demands, then it puts all AI companies at risk of the same thing.

Personally I think they should move to the EU. The recent EU laws align with Anthropics thinking.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#94

Post by salawat »

goranmoomin wrote: post #18

TBH I am sad that Anthropic is changing its stance, but in the current world, if you even care about LLM safety, I feel that this is the right choice — there’s too many model providers and they probably don’t consider safety as high priority as Anthropic. (Yes that might change, they can get pressurized by the govt, yada yada, but they literally created their own company because of AI safety, I do think they actually…

The world would be so much nicer if there were just fewer pragmatists shitting up the place for everyone. We might actually handle half our externalities.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#95

Post by EagnaIonat »

Art9681 wrote: post #19

Of course the US is going to do this and of course its in Anthropics best interest to comply. Right now China is flooding HuggingFace with models that will inevitably have this capability. Right now there are hundreds of models being hosted that have been deliberately processed to remove refusals and their safety training. Everyone who keeps up with this knows about it. HF knows about it. And it is pretty obvious tha…

> But let's worry about what the US DoD is doing

They want Anthropic to enabling mass surveillance and autonomous attack systems with no human in the loop.

Hardly compares to a kid downloading a model to experiment with.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#96

Post by Gud »

wiml wrote: post #61
nielsbot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sarcasm?

I wouldn't think so. Regulatory capture is a pretty typical activity for a dominant company.

Why is this down voted? Happens all the time, the large corporations always try to block using regulatory capture.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#98

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

brookst wrote: post #72
ifh-hn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's how blunt this comment is that gets it downvoted, but I don't disagree.

No, it’s because it shows either a simplistic or needlessly confrontational view of the world. Unless you’re independently wealthy (as some in HN are), you have to balance your morals, your views of how things should work, feeding your family, and recognizing that you may not actually know everything. It’s easy to sit back and advise others that they should die on every single hill. But it’s not especially insightful…

Spoken like a true LLM.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#99

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

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?

Could be a sort of canary, with the timing being a spotlight on the highly-visible pressure coming from the U.S. government.

Re: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

#100

Post by hedayet »

Developments like this make me less interested in building a "successful" tech company.

It increasingly feels like operating at that scale can require compromises I’m not comfortable making. Maybe that’s a personal limitation—but it’s one I’m choosing to keep.

I’d genuinely love to hear examples of tech companies that have scaled without losing their ethical footing. I could use the inspiration.

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