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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?
Apropos of England vs Argentina, I absolutely called it: https://www.themotte.org/post/3822/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/458055?context=8#context
Wouldn't be England if they didn't first give us hope only to lose in the worst possible way and to the worst possible team to lose to.
I am British living in England, and support England, so I feel the pain, although I can acknowledge that we deserved to lose this one. (So did Argentina in the first half).
But I can at least be aware that England were in a World Cup semi-final. For the second time in eight years. And that is a stunning achievement. In 1990 everyone knew this - even after going out on penalties to West Germany, the team that made the semi-final were hailed as heroes. But English fans are more susceptible to entitlement that any other country except Brazil, and now we have far too many people thinking we deserve to win the World Cup and anything less is a disappointment that the manager should be blamed for.
I'm still dreaming, but I think the 60 years of hurt are basically over now. If England had played their best and the opposition had not, we would have won the World Cup. But the opposite was what happened in the second half of yesterday's game.
OTOH in countries like Finland (where we have never participated in the World Cup and only once in the Euros) there's a long tradition of many people supporting England on the basis of old "honest lads who play hard, don't go for diving" narratives, and this World Cup, at least, has been a nail in the coffin of that myth.
To be fair, the ratio of fouls Argentina:England was literally 2:1. And the yellow cards were worse. England played a comparatively clean game.
England players don’t do the grandiose ‘let me hear your joy, pour champagne on me now’ routine when they score either.
Playing less dirty than argentina is nothing to brag about.
I'll be honest, I only tuned in for the semi-finals. I assumed that lots of fouling was just how the game was played these days, and that Argentina was overdoing it.
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