Comment by vanillameow
4 hours ago
I would agree if not for the fact that they just let a $200M contract slip through over it. You could argue it's "safety theater" in itself but that seems like a risky gambit especially with this administration. I definitely trust Anthropic more than OpenAI. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's probably pretty imperative that Anthropic stays a frontrunner in this race and doesn't leave the field exclusively to OAI (and maybe Google which is just as bad). That doesn't mean I'm exactly happy with Anthropic's comments like "mass surveillance bad but only for the US". But Anthropic at least regularly asks questions about the direction of AI development. I haven't seen the other frontier model companies do any such thing.
What does $200m mean for someone who thinks a trillion in revenue is likely among AI companies in the next 5 years? Which is a real quote.
Regardless, I think if you are thinking purely from a ruthless business standpoint then standing up to the DoD was an incredibly ill-advised move. It's basically free financial and technological backing at the cost of ethics. Additionally, basically everyone with functioning eyeballs knows that the current US administration is incredibly vindicative, reckless and short-tempered. I would agree that in a more tame administration, you might do something like this as a publicity stunt. In the Trump administration, and while the AI arms race is still in full force, it feels like there has to be at least somewhat genuine sentiment behind it, otherwise it just doesn't really make sense. Like what do they accomplish from this? You'll get some users who will view you more favourably for it but it probably won't make up for the lost revenue, and no matter how many people like you, if you are first to AGI in this industry you win. The prior sentiment basically won't matter at that point. In the most critical interpretation I guess you could say if the bubble pops it might be more of a matter of sentiment. I don't know, in my mind the math just doesn't work for it to be a business move.