Comment by EMIRELADERO
18 hours ago
You are right to feel that way about the frontier labs, especially Anthropic. From https://stratechery.com/2026/anthropics-safety-superpower/
> "Anthropic believes that they are the ones who should have final say over how Anthropic is used; given that they think only they should be developing leading edge AI, they by extension think that only they should have final say over AI generally. When you further combine this realization with the company’s pronouncements about AI’s ability to conduct all economic activity, you realize that Anthropic’s leadership effectively wants to have power over everything and everyone."
To be fair, we're simultaneously mocking anthropic for believing in safety so much and also for them thinking they're the only ones that care enough about it. It's true that no one else seems to care as much. Judging by reactions from everyone, all their safety talk is very bad PR.
The criticism isn't that they believe in safety too much. It's that they patently using safety as a red herring with the actual goal of regulating away competition that they know the cannot beat.
The people involved have been talking about safety long before they had any users or a company.
"Concrete Problems in AI Safety" by Dario and another founder was published 2016, anthropic was founded 2021. Among a bunch of other examples, including other founders.
If safety is seen as a joke now, it was really seen as a joke back then. The reason they keep shooting themselves in the foot with bad PR is because they truly believe in risks.
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What they believe now or care about is fundamentally not very relevant: allowing them a monopoly would be a big mistake. Google was supposed to do no evil and it probably started that way but nothing guarantees the future other than having alternatives.
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