>Everything that you're saying can be done with open-weights models by bad people can also be done with closed-weights models by the people who own them.
The latter is a much smaller group of people located in a limited number of countries. It's clearly easier to keep a limited number of entities in check than a wider group that might include 100s of thousands to millions of entities.
>And there is no defence against that, we are forced to trust that the owners are not bad people.
Yes there is; Regulation and oversight. As all developed nations do with technologies that present a risk to public safety.
>At least with open weights we know the danger
We would have a better understanding of the threat in some ways, but worse in others. Having access to open weights models gives us no insight into how and where the models are being modified, deployed, and used elsewhere.
The core safety-related arguments for closed weights are:
1. Visibility. API providers can monitor for misuse, and regulators only need to oversee a few centralised players. Once weights are released, anyone with sufficient hardware (foreign governments, criminal groups, terrorists?) can run them and monitoring is no longer feasible.
2. Revocability and containment. If closed-weights models are found to be dangerous, access can be withdrawn. Deployments that are autonomously causing harm are easier to contain.
3. Guardrails. Safety fine-tuning and classifiers can be removed from open-weights models, enabling harmful use that would not be possible via API.
It's hard to be certain what each individual thinks. We can do our best to judge based on what they each say and do. And there are significant differences in what each of these individuals have chosen to say and do over the years. The info available to the public makes it seem a lot like Dario's motivations & priorities differ from those of Sam and others.
This doesn't seem like the right place to spend my time litigating that point to its fullest extent (no-one here is doing that). But there's plenty of relevant info surrounding eg.:
* The New Yorker article on Altman [1]
* The story behind Anthropic's founding
* Various efforts to influence government policy (a16z policies and contributors [2], Trump's inauguration donors [3], giving Trump credit for AI infrastructure [4], Dario's op-eds [5])
A no-investment policy would take them off the scene entirely. Essentially handing over the reins to OpenAI, Google, and others. Their position is something close to "if I don't do it, someone worse will".
There's a more nuanced discussion that could be had about how to balance relevance with outside influence. But at a foundational level it should be acknowledged that the tradeoff exists, and that receiving outside investment can't alone be seen as evidence of corruption.
Besides that, there's more that can be said about other things like their corporate structure or the degree to which they accelerated the AI race.
When I read this comment I don't get "Neutral Party" from it. I'm finding it hard to decide whether to focus on the loaded characterisations or (my best guess at) the underlying substance.
To address the point I think you (and the article) are making; there's a difference between advocating that a scoped, due-process-protected power exist and endorsing any given exercise of it. This point is made in Anthropic's original statement, but it's seemingly been missed by everyone taking a position against them.
>As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles. [1]
But with respect to your specific post:
>high-minded philosophical nonsense
Taking a sophisticated approach to a problem will generally improve the outcome. I suppose your point is that it can be difficult to deliniate sophisticated & good-faith reasoning from self-serving rationalisation. Much of what I've seen from Anthropic supports the former. Perhaps others could do more to build up the case for the latter.
You can look at things like the circumstances that the company was founded in, the lack of political cozying with the current admin, the lack of controversies or disgruntled ex-employees, them taking a stand against the DoD (against their business interests), positions they've taken on various issues including data centres in gulf states.
>Suppose a company calls themselves The Doomsday Device Company
Anthropic hasn't. What's the explanatory purpose of adding this to the analogy?
>They make and sell excellent-quality doomsday devices | They regularly go online to proclaim that their doomsday devices are the best and most powerful, and also that doomsday devices are dangerous and should be regulated.
Anthropic invests a reasonable amount into assuring the safety of the products they sell. No-one is claiming they sell doomsday devices. Concerns of doom relate to future iterations of the underlying technology.
>The Doosmday Device company spends a great deal of time and money telling everyone: "Our doomsday device is the most doomy of all time!"
They have what's essentially an automated vulnerability-discovering machine. They've done their best to be open about the very real implications of general availability of a system like this. Using the word "doomy" positions them as childish and unsophisticated for doing this, when it's actually the reasonable and responsible thing to do.
I’ve seen the point raised elsewhere that this could be the double usage promo that was available from the 13th of March to the 28th. ie. people getting used to the promo then feeling impacted when it finished.
Although it seems that enterprise wasn’t included, so maybe not in your case.
SmartTube is good for this. It needs to be installed by the APK and updated manually but that’s the only friction I’ve encountered. Been using for around a year I’d say.
It even has SponsorBlock built in, so it can be configured to skip things like intros, recaps, or sponsor segments.
The latter is a much smaller group of people located in a limited number of countries. It's clearly easier to keep a limited number of entities in check than a wider group that might include 100s of thousands to millions of entities.
>And there is no defence against that, we are forced to trust that the owners are not bad people.
Yes there is; Regulation and oversight. As all developed nations do with technologies that present a risk to public safety.
>At least with open weights we know the danger
We would have a better understanding of the threat in some ways, but worse in others. Having access to open weights models gives us no insight into how and where the models are being modified, deployed, and used elsewhere.