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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#971

Post by eudamoniac »

ericmay wrote: post #845

I’m not advocating for this. ~~~~~~ If you really believed these labs were going to result in the extinction of humanity and you saw it first hand, don’t you have a moral obligation not to quit your job but to go and try and kill everyone working on said project, blow it up, or otherwise stop it? I take these resignations with a grain of salt precisely for that reason. If I worked at a job and I saw some crazy guy or…

This reminds me of Trump hysterics. If someone actually believed that Trump was going to end democracy and become dictator for life and kill all minorities etc, he would behave a lot differently than everyone saying that behaves.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#972

Post by rozap »

tmvphil wrote: post #831
chewbacha wrote: post #80

The most optimistic outcome of generative AI leaves us with a technology that warps our perception of reality and crushes labor. The most pessimistic destroys all of humanity. Our CEOs not only insist we genuflect before these machines but measure our sacrifice and shame our reluctance.

The optimistic outcome is the machines do the work and people can be freed from drudgery.

How does that coexist with Capitalism? I just don't see a path.

Regardless of where you fall on the alignment chart, if you are looking backwards from now to the industrial revolution, it's pretty easy to make the claim that from a standpoint of pure technological progress (discounting all other things, like quality of life, environmental impact, etc) that capitalism "won". But going forward, if the need for labor is completely crushed, and capital continues to get concentrated into the hands of the elites, I just don't see how that is viable long term. It seems like for things to shift to the world Keynes (wrongly) predicted, where we all have abundance of leisure time, then there's a massive distribution of the fruits of automation into the hands of the masses, which needs to be controlled by an entity who does not purely exist to acquire more capital, which is sort of the end of capitalism as we know it.

Or maybe AI kills us all before we get there, who knows.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#973

Post by skeledrew »

hegelstoleit wrote: post #962
skeledrew wrote: post #954

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time authorities get there, if they actually prioritize it (police in many places already have a track record for not being very responsive, unless there're actual signs of a crime), something may have already happened to the child. You don't know because you already left, expecting that someone else will take care of it, when you were already in a position to help ensure that child's safety. No, if you think…

At this point the analogy has entirely collapsed, your job is to develop AI. Unless you're advocating for some kind of sabotage or something, I'm not sure what you're really suggesting he do. If he continues to do the work he's directly contributing to the problem and harm that it you see it to be causing. Nothing is going to change if you continue working there business as usual. It's by drawing a line in the sand a…

We have a pretty famous example, someone who's actions actually led to change: Edward Snowden. He didn't quit prematurely, crying to whoever would listen that he thought the US had a massive ongoing surveillance program. He actually stayed in the system which he was growing suspicious of, until he actually had proof of shenanigans and then he got as much of that proof as he could out before leaving.

Currently what we have with these people publicly quitting because "immoral things are happening" at AI labs are essentially crying wolf, and if/when something really worth taking action on does come up, it's pretty likely that many will be too jaded to care and as such there will be no/too little action.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#974

Post by fittingopposite »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…

Very common fallacy: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#975

Post by asdff »

Scrapemist wrote: post #516
asdff wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it already runs laps around us cognitively? And for physical tasks it can make a robot version of us that is stronger, faster, can do more, doesn't need to sleep, etc. Human bipedal form is probably pretty limiting compared to something better like a crab. Yes, laugh at the chinese robots who fall over at keynotes all you want, the ones sprinting at 30mph keep me up at night and that's probably not even rep…

Does your calculator runs laps around you? They have no intention of them selfs. I only fear the intention of the humans miss-using AI.

My calculator is not hacking other peoples websites, no.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#976

Post by fittingopposite »

ericmay wrote: post #845

I’m not advocating for this. ~~~~~~ If you really believed these labs were going to result in the extinction of humanity and you saw it first hand, don’t you have a moral obligation not to quit your job but to go and try and kill everyone working on said project, blow it up, or otherwise stop it? I take these resignations with a grain of salt precisely for that reason. If I worked at a job and I saw some crazy guy or…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has entered the chat...

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#978

Post by bigyabai »

senordevnyc wrote: post #910
copperx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To borrow on the 1990s Slashdot meme: 1. Invent transformer architecture. 2. Scale it up. 3. ??? 4. Machines become sentient and kill us all. OpenAI and Anthropic pinky promise that they have figured out #3 and they're not BSing just to get more funding, no. But because we live in a culture of fear, everyone eats it up no questions asked.

They literally have never promised anything like that. They have explicitly said repeatedly that they want regulation, oversight, nationalization, a global slowdown, etc. And then I have to read page after page of cynical comments about how that's all just hype and marketing and them wanting regulation to block their competition and blah blah blah. You people would only be happy if they stopped all AI development, bu…

> they want regulation, oversight, nationalization, a global slowdown, etc.

> that's all just hype and marketing and them wanting regulation to block their competition

I don't see how these two opinions have to be mutually exclusive. Everyone knows that OpenAI and Anthropic cannot IPO in their current state or the economy's current state. It makes perfect sense that they would lobby for a global slowdown to hamstring China, regulation that defers to them as experts, oversight by their own "experts" and nationalization to backstop both of their protectionist needs. Even if you think they're doing it for benevolent reasons, you have to admit that regulatory remediation only consolidates AI power.

We see extremely similar protectionist consolidation in FAANG from Google, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, all of whom receive political shielding for their "free speech" whenever another nation calls their product a monopoly, identifies a federal backdoor or boots them out of the market. Countries like Russia and China feel entirely justified for closing the door on American businesses and refusing to negotiate when they abuse good faith to promote an American hegemony.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#979

Post by 3dedb728-3f77 »

I am the only one reading this as an ads?

Just another one based on fear once again.

Can't they create a full account in a day with all its contacts and history anytime they want?

Do they not have already a back-list of accounts they can use with full history just for this?

It just make sense does it not?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#980

Post by 3dedb728-3f77 »

leokennis wrote: post #656

Every news headline or public statement these days is a gut punch. Only bad news, and nothing we (as "the general public") can do about it. Take this one. Ok, AI is going to ruin us all. But let's say we do our civic duty: we protest, vote in candidates with good views on AI etc. and somehow convince or regulate OpenAI and Anthropic into stopping their arms race... Then what about China? It would be a great opportuni…

It is just plain manipulation. So plain that I ask myself everyday who they fired that did it before, because at least that guy was not as plain and boring.
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