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Comment by wood_spirit

1 day ago

Meta to this is anyone remember those days - ages ago now, probably months at least! - when Anthropic’s moral stance against the administration (combined with general consensus they had by far the best model) was making them the underdog champion that got a swell of support on HN? Recently the temp on HN seems to be that they’ve jumped the shark? Their brand doesn’t ooze ethics any more and their models disappoint?

I think Dario kind of ruined the reputation of Anthropic. I remember reading his essay on "AI is super dangerous and we need guardrails" at the start of the year and it seemed like he was actually concerned.

But then it became apparent that there was a split between what he says and what his company does. For instance, the small incident with the Fable release:

> Dario keeps saying "we have an incredible hacking weapon called Fable/Mythos, AI is dangerous" > Fable is released. > The U.S. government restricte access to Fable. > "Oh no, this is sabotage!"

From my point of view, anything this man does is a PR stunt now that the trust has been broken, and I imagine other people feel the same.

HN's mood is usually sour about everything, but can be temporarily influenced by emotionally-charged (usually political) events. The anti-US administration boost wore off and now we're back to being sour about Anthropic. It's time for Dario to tweet something antagonistic towards the administration or endorse some fashionable political candidates.

I'd expect this to cycle between companies ~monthly until they all IPO. As it turns out people do sometimes prefer speed and better UX. If the model (Sol, for now) has fewer parameters and also happens to be capable of solving deeply complex Fable-adjacent problems sometimes, even better.