ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
6hr ago
Either no amount of intelligence is capable of coming up with such a plan (perhaps training humans to have sufficient disgust reaction is the solution to AI alignment?)
I think it's this. But I don't think disgust reactions will save us: although they will limit the rate of diffusion, capitalism will select for companies that don't have the same kind of institutional disgust reaction and are willing to do what it takes for profit/success.
ThenElection
6hr ago
I'd be curious to know more about if the air defenses were representative of current Chinese air defenses, or more like old tech surplus being sold off Temu.
ThenElection
7hr ago
Anthropic already has a London office. Beyond that, Dario has a deep rootedness in San Francisco: he grew up here, went to Lowell, and returned as soon as he could after his studies. The choice to locate in San Francisco is rooted in a genuine love of place, not purely business reasons.
ThenElection
7hr ago
There is an argument for OpenAI being a safer steward for AI than Anthropic, based purely on Sam having exponentially stronger survival instincts than Dario.
ThenElection
7hr ago
Something something Mistral, something something one BILLION dollar ten year investment.
ThenElection
8hr ago
For AI, I think the threat depends on one's model of future progress. Iterative refining and engineering: China is all you need. Significant paradigm shift: the US has the edge, at least until knowledge of the paradigm shift diffuses.
Though even for the latter, people underestimate China's research chops. And a significant component of our edge is that the most skilled Chinese researchers would prefer to work and live here and not in China.
To add some descriptive flavor: the vast majority of China's involuntary organ donations were of mundane criminals--rapists, murderers--along with the very occasional particularly obnoxious dissidents. It's also decreased a lot in the past decade. And, most forced political dissident organ donations aren't of rival factions in the CCP (actual potential rivals of political power), but what's fairly described as FG lunatics. Actual political rivals suffer more mundane consequences when they lose: being sidelined, fewer economic opportunities for their children. Maybe a prison term if they made a wild miscalculation.
Although bad in many ways, it's less different than the US system than many Americans like to admit.
ThenElection
16hr ago
"they are more long term" here referred to the demographic problems predictably developing into a problem only on the scale of decades, not to any inherent civilizational differences in discount rates. The idea that Chinese government inherently is better at long term planning is a useful domestic myth/international propaganda.
ThenElection
16hr ago
Latter. Tech savants and trans people are both disproportionately neurodivergent.
ThenElection
16hr ago
I do not believe that China is any kind of perfectly rational, efficient society. And it creates fewer true geniuses (paradigm breaking) than Western systems. But, it is plausible that AGI isn't something that comes from a radical shift in paradigm but some combination of massive aggregated data and incremental engineering. If so, China is in a very strong position.
ThenElection
16hr ago
The time to catch up is time for their own demographic and economic issues to implode
China does face severe demographic issues, moreso than the US. But they are more long-term. If we make it to 2040 without a conflict, I'll feel very happy and secure. But technology and China's economy progress much faster than demographic trends; within the next ten years, there will be a peak in China's relative strength vs the USA, and that's when they will act.
gets to be an involuntary organ donor
China turns its undesirables into something useful; the USA lets its undesirables run amok degrading everyone else's quality of life. Human rights etc aside, it's not at all clear the USA's approach is superior for the health of the nation and progress of civilization.
ThenElection
17hr ago
Anthropic obviously believes that MAGA will not retain total control of the government for long, and that it is therefore not in their best interests to do a lot of ring-kissing.
They are wrong: MAGA will control the relevant parts of government at least until January 2029. People may differ on AI timelines, but the Anthropic people I know all have shorter timelines than that. This is not a long term iterated game.
ThenElection
17hr ago
One of my hot takes that is very obviously true (to me, at least) and angers everyone is that trans women are superior programmers (and pentesters) to cis men, cis women, and trans men.
ThenElection
17hr ago
That doesn't answer why only Anthropic is considered dangerous
I, personally, am not disputing that the Trump administration is not applying objective standards here. My point is that Anthropic wants an institutional ecosystem where powerful governments select which models are safe to release to the public (a system I agree with!); you can't just push for that and then throw a hissy fit when actually existing governments do it wrong, secure in the belief that the Righteous are somehow destined to fix things.
given the likely short timeline
That is everything, here. And I don't think Dario is making rational, utility maximizing calculations here: I think he has his set of values and is then applying them blindly thinking that because they are good, their blind application must be utility maximizing. That is not sufficient for the situation I (and from what I can tell, he) believe is at hand.
ThenElection
17hr ago
one strong strike for her expertise
ThenElection
17hr ago
Even granting that the long arc of history bends toward whiteness, part of that involves countries like the USA recognizing and responding to foreign threats.
Also, have you met Canada?
Her Twitter is somewhat trans-coded, with the mask, pronouns, and hair, which is worth at least one strong strike for her expertise, and kind of cancels out the attention seeking lawsuit, which would then be par for course if she's trans. (Though, as far I can tell, she's not actually trans.)
Generally, she's well-regarded. tptacek, years ago, has referenced her as credible on HN; she's not a no-name who has been elevated from obscurity for political purposes.
ThenElection
18hr ago
Regardless of who's to blame, China is watching from afar and grinning. American dysfunction gives them more time to catch up; the finger pointing about who's really the bad actor is just a cherry on top of the pie of distraction.
There are other enemies in this world than the near ones.
ThenElection
19hr ago
Then why is only Anthropic targeted and why only foreign nationals?
In principle, Anthropic agrees the government should control when releases are made and models are recalled. Obviously it'd be better if this were done by some objective standard than fits of pique and grudge, but there's the world we want vs the world we have.
I'm sure Anthropic could make this all go away if they slipped him some 24 karet gold statues and a few million dollar dinners hosted at Mar a Lago.
I mean... They should. AI is world historical in importance, and the next 2 years are more important than any years before. Paying off a goon, though distasteful, is strictly superior to e.g. destroying the world. They could probably get away with a million dollars and some nice words, even: Trump is a very cheap date. And, given the stakes, a billion would be a good deal.
Safety needs to be either the actual number one priority, in which case you sacrifice other values for it. Or, if other values trump it, then your commitment to safety is shallow, and people will rightly see advertising of it as duplicitous.
ThenElection
20hr ago
Opus 4.8 offers a series of recommendations that, although we would all likely find room to quibble with, seems like most would agree would be better than Anthropic is doing now (admittedly a very low bar). Probably could go back to models from 2024 and pass that, though.
I think the human leadership of Anthropic just finds digesting and following those recommendations very distasteful.
ThenElection
21hr ago
It was always weird to stitch xAI and the SpaceX together. The latter is a solid, well executed company that is in a dominant position with innovative technology and a clear market, with its only downside being that its market offers (relatively) limited upside. The other is a gesture towards almost infinite upside, but in practice seems to be a data center REIT.
Combine them, sprinkle in some Elon reality distortion field, and you end up with wild 13 digit speculative TAMs of orbital data centers.
ThenElection
1d ago
Does anybody else remember our discussions from a few months ago? Because what's been reported so far looks nothing like what many confidently predicted back then.
My recollection was more that people thought it would go on for a couple months and ultimately be a whole lot of nothinghappens, except we'll have burnt a giant pile of money and raised oil prices, accomplishing nothing.
My silver lining take on the war (as it's certain that this time, it will finally be over!) is that we'll likely be much more skeptical about being dragged into pointless wars by "allies" who are much more trouble than they're worth, a learning we've gotten in a relatively low stakes environment.
ThenElection
1d ago
A deal to maybe in sixty days announce another deal.
ThenElection
5d ago
More recent than Dradis's claim, but OAI claims to have discovered a similar influence campaign from China yesterday:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/10/openai-china-ai-data-centers-report-00957612
Take it up with SpaceX's S-1.
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