Comment by un_montagnard
10 hours ago
Anthropic is about to go public, but they figured they can't keep making improvement at the same pace they used to. If the frontier is paced, they can continue hyping their unreleased capabilities that coincidentally cannot be released due to things outside their control. Which buy them more time to try to improve the models.
This is just completely false lol. They most certainly can make better models - why cant people here just read this for face value? I think anthropic is legitimately concerned about the safety implications of stronger models. Race dynamics necessitate that they make better and better models, which they clearly think is bad.
They have an internal model which could solve a millenium problem end to end with no intervention, whereas current available models can't. They can clearly make better models. Not everything these guys say is some 500iq game theory optimal 4D chess PR or subterfuge strategy.
> which they clearly think is bad
These are companies with huge amounts of money invested in them. Their main responsibility is to their investors. If building better models (or making more money from the models they already have) would increase returns, they would do it. So they clearly can’t do it right now.
Climate change hasn’t stopped the oil industry, and concerns about forever chemicals haven’t stopped the chemical industry. Companies don’t usually give up profitable opportunities just because they might be harmful or kill us all in the long term..
I think you fundamentally misunderstand what kind of company Anthropic is. I'm simply taking the path of least resistance when understanding what people at Anthropic have to say, and basically every public source points to Anthropic talking the talk as well as walking the walk with regards to AI safety and their ideas on AI governance.
Re the point on returning shareholder value, Anthropic is a PBC:
> Public Benefit Purpose: Under Delaware law, a PBC allows directors to legally weigh social and public good alongside maximizing profit for stockholders
Investors surely know this and Anthropic probably has pretty reasonable legal grounds to stand on if they chose to prioritize safety over profits.
Seems pretty clear to me that this is in earnest.