We live in a capitalist economy. What do you expect, a company to just say 'Thats fine we have enough money we dont need any more'?
How does a $100 billion dollar company grow? By taking on massive government and military contracts, they are the only clients big enough left in the world.
If a company does not show continual growth then it is classed as failing. That is the society we have built, and you cannot blame one man for following those principles. Every CEO in existence does the same.
Somehow Anthropic’s CEO managed to reach a different conclusion.
They don’t have to do business with every single entity who asks them to and they don’t have to bend over for every stipulation that that entity asks for.
Yep, in exactly the same way that for years Google was 'not evil'.
When anthropic can no longer grow through developer subscriptions and deals with ethical companies, Lets see how long it takes their shareholders to force them to remove such sweet statements from their company mission statement.
I love how you chastised me for speculating on Altman’s mind state but apparently you can predict the future and know what Anthropic is going to do N years from now.
Yeah maybe Anthropic will become a rent-seeking corporation. That’s likely even. And yet that’s not actually relevant at all to what I said; the fact is that right now they appear to have more principles than Altman and OpenAI
There is no corporation in existence that hasnt eventually bowed to the whim of their shareholder masters. Everybody grows up and moves on, and when everybody in Anthropic who shares your golden heart is gone onto their next job, the companies ethical nature will plummet rapidly.
We live in a multifaceted (are we allowed to use that word again? I think 2026 models have stopped using it) economy.
> That is the society we have built
Maybe you have, I sure haven't. Luckily "we" also haven't, as many - no, the overwhelming majority of people - aren't like that.
> and you cannot blame one man for following those principles.
You absolutely can, as much as you can blame the sadistic guards at Auschwitz.
> Every CEO in existence does the same.
A shocking, bald-faced lie. How do you get these keystrokes out of your fingers? This is so trivially false it immediately outs itself as bad faith. It takes less time to fact-check as being made up than the average post on Truth Social.
If 'we', the collective population of the earth, have not made the society we live in, then who has?
> You absolutely can, as much as you can blame the sadistic guards at Auschwitz.
If this was true millions of German soldiers would have been captured and punished/killed at the end of the war. Guess what? They were all rehabilitaed and reintegrated into society, even though they all followed orders and killed millions of people. We did not judge them and gave them a second chance. Some simple research will show you this.
> It takes less time to fact-check as being made up than the average post on Truth Social.
It also takes less time and energy to just attack and be spiteful and insulting in a forum reply, than to engage in a discussion and explain your opinons properly.
It is the justification for anything any corporation does. This is a company with boards of directors and shareholders, you really think this is just Sams opinion guiding this?
> Sam Altman has demonstrated that he's a piece of * with this move.
Thats is your opinion based only on what his company has publicly dislcosed to you. I prefer not to judge a mans character based on corporate puffery.
> He can fucking afford to have some fucking principles.
Who is to say he doesnt? Just because they dont align with yours doesnt mean he doesnt have his own principles.
> he's choosing to do the wrong thing
To many millions he is doing the right thing. I am on the fence personally, but I know many people who think that increasing defense capabilities at any cost is something that the governmetn should be doing. Any company that helps them do that is 'doing the right thing'.
> I wouldn't let being a coward stop me from doing the right thing
The 'right thing' is always subjective, and for you it is decided by you alone. Try to remember that and see things from both sides.
He posted like seven hours ago about these principles and changed them like twenty minutes after the president had a temper tantrum about Anthropic.
Whether or not he agrees with my principles isn’t the issue. He doesn’t even agree with his own stated principles. He posted his stipulations about AI models used by the department of defense to presumably get social credit, and then changed his mind over the course of a few hours.
He claims that the Department of Defense principles just happen to now align with these principles but as far as I can tell he seems to just be trusting their word. The word of a Fox News TV host and a convicted fraudster.
You can judge his actions all you like, but unless you know the man and sit down and discuss it with him everything you are saying is just speculation and opinion. That is fine, just realise that.
Umm, no shit? This isn’t actually saying anything. I am saying that his stated principles are inconsistent with his actions.
Yes, sure, maybe deep down on his heart of hearts he actually is the most kind caring person who ever existed, but I have no way of knowing what is in his heart of hearts so I can only judge him by what he has said and done, and I am arguing that his actions don’t match his words.
You really think that a CEOs public statements match their real thoughts and feelings?
Everything you hear from any CEO is constructed to form a desired image and narrative. Any public statements from a CEO that you are using to judge their character is completely false and misguided. You have no idea what the real man is behind the image.
I'll note you didn't answer my question. I assume this is because the answer to "what's left" is "excuses," which is what you appear to be describing now.
You haven’t really gone through my comment history here, which is fine, I haven’t gone through yours, but if you had you would see that today I posted about how you can’t trust anything billionaires say because there’s no negative consequences for lying.
I am arguing that he posted on Twitter not even 24 hours ago a post laying out what looked like principles. Not even 24 hours later he decided that those principles aren’t actually important.
I am not a psychic because psychics don’t actually exist, so I can’t read minds, so I cannot know what he is actually thinking. I am claiming that he’s a piece of shit for not following his own stated principles. I actually do think billionaires should face consequences for lying.
My partner who is an accountant, so intelligent but not technical, watched some Veritasium documentaries the other day.
Her comment was that she was really impressed that it didnt dumb anything down like normal documentaries do. She was able to follow along more technical stuff than she anticipated, and that made her enjoy it even more.
I think we need to give people more credit when it comes to complex or techincal explanations. If people are enjoying the context but dont understand the techincal, they can just gloss over that if they prefer. But I felt this was quite telling at how and why Veritasium is such a popular channel.
In the UK we call this 'Surface Dressing' and is a typical money saving meaasure to avoid the full cost of paving the road properly. It looks terrible and doenst last very long, so peronsally I dont see the point.
I would prefer that over here in slovenia.... instead, we can't repave a street without digging a few meters deep, finding ancient roman remains, and delaying the repair for many months... heck, even without finding roman stuff, we had an 800m long road closed for 2 years...
So yeah, it's either potholes or road closure for a year++.
Nope, thats the cheap way to save money in the short term. But it makes the roads much worse quality for a lot longer. The surface dressing rips and pulls up very quickly, and so the road is rough and full of holes for a longer period.
reply