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I don't know why people keep repeating this. From Anthropic:
Does this sound like Anthropic decides who uses their models? Does Ford decide who uses their cars?
Yes, they weren't happy about a schizophrenic and vindictive ban of their model due to capabilities that it shares with other models.
You can be in favor of a consistent regulatory framework without being in favor of arbitrary decisions by the president based on who is in and who is out.
You can, but cars, airplanes and drugs are famous examples of very heavily regulated industries where creating a new business is almost impossible, incumbents rule, and incumbents and their lobbyists design the majority of the regulations themselves.
This is, in fact:
and Anthropic is just putting it into nice friendly words that people are swallowing. While I deeply dislike the way the Trump government handled the Fable incident, all this ultimately a fight over who gets to rule, who gets to be in and out, and who gets to set the rules. If the Trump government had calmly and consistently mandated open weight releases and anti-monopoly legislation, Anthropic would be screaming about how this was unsafe.
Creating a new business in these sectors is difficult because the sectors are inherently difficult to make money in. Moderna was founded in 2010 and basically had nothing going on until Covid. SpaceX was founded 2002 and only had a successful launch in 2008 after near bankruptcy. It is nevertheless possible to enter these markets.
I don't see the contradiction here. "You say you want regulatory regime A, but in fact you would hate regulatory regime B which doesn't accomplish the same goals. Curious!" The point is not that Anthropic wants a regulatory regime, they want a regulatory regime that is oriented around mitigating AI risks.
Anthropic's conception of 'mitigating AI risks' is 'do everything I say, just the way I say it, and this system has to be enforced by someone who thinks like me'. It's like Microsoft saying, 'look, I don't want a monopoly, I just want to recognise that CPUs being able to run an open or foreign OS is a clear threat to public safety, and incidentally don't you think Apple bundling OS and hardware really deserves anti-monopoly legislation?'.
If your preferred regulatory regime also excludes almost all your potential competitors except the ones you're basically okay with, then it is indistinguishable from a power grab. From a customer and an enthusiast perspective I really don't care which of Anthropic or OpenAI comes out on top. I don't just want it to be technically possible to enter these markets, I want it to be easy. I want us to strain every sinew to allow new AI companies to start, I want us to give gobs of compute to anyone who isn't Anthropic or OpenAI. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
This is a fully general counterargument against any regulation. Even your proposed regime rounds off to "do everything I say the way I say it and it has to be enforced by someone who thinks like me."
Their stated beliefs on AI dangers, which philosophically long predate Anthropic as a going concern, are entirely consistent with the proposed regime. In fact, it would be contradictory for them to believe in AI risks and argue for laissez-faire. Perhaps you disagree on the risks, but that is the root of the disagreement, not the regulatory framework.
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I think that their stated beliefs on AI dangers, which long predate Anthropic as a going concern (and which like all delusions survived the future being completely different from all claims made for the last 15 years), are delusions of grandeur for the Silicon Valley class the way that the Cult of Reason justified taking over France and cutting off the heads off anyone who expressed doubt. The sincerity of their beliefs, which I mostly don't doubt, can't be separated from the fact that these beliefs are grossly self-aggrandising and justify the infinite self-serving accumulation of power.
My point is that a power grab is still a power grab. Dressing it up in impassioned and sincere rhetoric about how everyone will die if they don't get power doesn't make it any less of a power grab.
(My proposed regime at least rounds off to opening the floor to everyone.)
It obviously can't be the case that "this increases the power of AI companies that take safety seriously" is an argument against a regulatory regime that takes AI safety seriously. The argument must actually be that AI safety is not a concern, not that even if it is a concern we must still be suicidally unconcerned.
Since the ask is massive, the argument must convince me and others that AI safety is a concern. I've heard that argument, as have many, and I don't believe it. The fact that it seems obviously motivated is a part of why I don't believe it though there are many others.
If somebody tells you out of the blue that you are going to die of cancer unless you take a 50g zinc tablet every day, it is obviously relevant if he is a travelling zinc salesman! Not to the extent of completely shutting him down, necessarily, one might hear him out; a world where one is barred from raising safety concerns if one sells safety products is obviously not very sensible. Nevertheless, it remains the case that our zinc salesman has a conflict of interest large enough to drive a bus through and that is going to be a factor in whether we believe his predictions and how much proof we demand of his assertions.
And, as I say, I do not like the way that AI safety groups operate, even the ones who don't profit directly off the regulation and the scaremongering. Take for example Scott Alexander leaving his name off the new AI 2040 document despite having done a serious amount of writing for it, so that he can "discuss it without PR issues". That is, he has hidden his involvement to push his political manifesto whilst pretending to be an interested bystander. Every aspect of it looks like a cult, and the AI safety movement has made no secret that their intended solution to 'making AI not kill us all' has no democratic element but is to be driven entirely by lobbying and backroom wrangling and military force. Which isn't surprising considering that Scott's latest post on AI regulation has gone down like a sack of cold sick even in an EA-friendly place.
They are, in short, totally uninterested in whether the rest of the world agrees with their analysis, and they do not intend to permit dissent. Their intended solution is to get the two largest countries in the world to get together and fuck up anyone who disagrees with them in ways that would horrify them for literally any other problem except their super-special Millenarian one.
If somebody believed that there would be terrible consequences for the human race unless everyone took a 50g zinc tablet, could they be anything but a traveling zinc salesman, or a fellow, uh, traveler?
Your opinion is that we can't trust people concerned about AI safety about AI safety because it may increase their status. Okay, who can we trust about AI safety? People unconcerned about AI safety? Seems like epistemic closure to me.
I can't honestly believe you think his involvement is "hidden" when he discloses it in the opening section of his first post on the topic.
This is already basically how nuclear non-proliferation works, as we've seen in Iran. Again, you can argue about if AI is as dangerous as nuclear weapons, but if you assume arguendo it is, then this is an obviously similar regulatory regime that basically nobody opposes.
Your argument basically boils down to:
If AI really is dangerous, we would need to take drastic action to avoid bad outcomes.
Drastic action would be bad.
Therefore, AI can't be dangerous.
Or perhaps:
The people who think AI is dangerous are suggesting drastic action.
Therefore, AI can't be dangerous.
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