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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9875 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Anthropic is Now Running Television Ads Threatening Humanity

I saw this ad play on my tv while watching the England vs Argentina postgame. I could not believe what I was watching. I had vaguely heard of a tone-deaf video from Anthropic communications, but I hadn't actually watched it until it popped up on my screen against my will. I am stunned that this is how Anthropic chose to portray themselves to the general public. Maybe this sort of messaging works on a tiny subset of niche technological policy nerds, but they played this during the World Cup.

The ad opens with scenes of destruction: a house ablaze, civil unrest in the streets, hundreds of graves at Arlington National Cemetary. A concerned voiceover asks the questions that many of us ask of the AI industry every day. "Can AI be trusted?" "Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?" "How do we really ensure that what we're aiming to acheive really does benefit the majority of people?" All good questions that the rest of the ad is utterly unconcerned with answering.

It feels like a threat. It doesn't feel like they're saying, "oh please God somebody stop us". It feels like they're saying, "just try and stop us, MUAHAHAHAHA!" I suppose it's good that they acknowledge the gravity of what they are undertaking, but that doesn't really matter if they keep doing it anyway.

Also, sort-of-unrelated-but-not-really: Is "Total Clanker Genocide" an acceptable sign for an anti-AI protest?

So my take is that Dario really likes the Biden era AI plan where there would be a small number of officially sanctioned companies who worked with government on regulation and all other AI vendors would be effectively banned.

He thinks that by making threats and warnings he can get that back.

However he is bad at politics. He doesn't seem to grasp that the Trump admin isn't going to give him any control over government policies. They are philosophically opposed to a setup where the elected President has to follow the dictates of a specific citizen with no constitutional authority.

The Fable block is best understood in this light.

"Our model is so dangerous! Congress must act to regulate us!"

"We can regulate you without Congress."

So I think we're going to see a long series of events where Anthropic pokes the government and the government smacks them down. At least for the rest of Trump's term.

Dario might end up putting himself in a position where's he's ousted. I think that's more likely than him learning to back down.

They are philosophically opposed to a setup where the elected President has to follow the dictates of a specific citizen with no constitutional authority.

And with constitutional authority too.

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