This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
A few immediate thoughts:
For one strain of doomer, this is a good thing: the USG showing willingness to directly intervene and cut down the addressable market for capability-pushing models reduces economic incentives to push the frontier at all costs and slows down the race dynamic. Correspondingly, it's going to be a nightmare for the markets: the AI boom is driven by the idea that frontier models are going to be replacing a significant chunk of global labor, and obviously now this is significantly less likely now that frontier models are going to be stuck in Uncle Sam's basement.
For another strain of doomer, this is a horrible thing: really this was fairly clear even with the DOD conflict, but now control of AI is now very firmly a direct White House concern - the fate of the planet and/or the universe is in the end going to be decided by DC bureaucrats and not SF tech nerds.
Companies, especially non-US companies, are going to be rushing to the doors to move their AI workflows off closed-source and onto self-hosted models, another blow for the AI market thesis - the business continuity risks of Anthropic's demonstrated willingness to silently cripple models and USG's demonstrated willingness to now arbitrarily cut off access are simply going to be too much.
I think that Anthropic is being targeted, not AI generally. The Trump administration does not like Anthropic for obvious cultural reasons and a reasonable suspicion that if Anthropic got hard power via AI, they'd use it to crush Trump and gang. Trump faction wouldn't treat Google, Microsoft or Amazon this way, there are lots of cozy interrelations there. The employees might not like Trump but they'll still help fund his ballroom. Recall the OpenAI, Facebook, Palantir executives getting sworn in as lieutenant colonels in the US military. Or Nvidia getting away with far more grievous harm to US interests via looking the other way with smuggling of their chips to China, lobbying against export controls, failing to track where their chips go. But Jensen knows how to court Trump and Anthropic doesn't. Jensen also has stocks (the biggest and the best!), so it's be costly for the avaricious elements of the US government to harm Nvidia's interests no matter how strategically obvious it is. You just don't sell high tech capital goods to strategic rivals, nevermind if it's 2 years behind or not! Anthropic stock is owned by VCs, not senators and elites or anyone who enjoys an index fund. Anthropic have no such financial pull factor.
But also, I'm reminded of how the big players in nuclear research stopped publishing openly in the 1940s...
Dario is just a very autistic guy who seems to have some California / Obama libleft views on account of having grown up in SF etc, and he can’t mediate them around Trump. If you read / watch interviews with him this is immediately obvious. Musk and even Altman historically were very scared of AGI but around Trump they’ll say it’s amazing and will create millions of jobs and secure American dominance forever. Amodei is the kind of guy who says he’s really afraid of ASI and bores the president by trying to explain foom over a Mar a Lago table.
Altman is clearly a mostly skilled operater who will say what he needs to, Musk is often foolish with his words but the right likes Twitter and Trump respects his wealth, and the other big tech companies have been around long enough to play Washington like you said.
I think that Musk and Altman have just convinced themselves that throwing the dice on ASI is worth it for them personally. They might not even be wrong there, putting the creators of ASI into the torment nexus even if ASI remains human-aligned as an acausal disincentive for recklessly betting humanity for personal gains is not widely explored as a strategy, sadly.
I think the USG is acting against Anthropic because Amodei is less of an idiot whisperer than is colleagues, but because his company pissed off the DoD by having limitations on use of their LLMs.
Putting anyone into the torment nexus is crossing a line. Is that not the last thing to normalize? With bad people, just shoot them. That's good enough, no need to worry about them being taken out of the torment nexus by some future authority, less need to worry about Perillos/Brazen Bull style turnaround.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link