Anthropic candidates face blunt money question

It’s becoming trendy to hate on Anthropic these days but their AI security record speaks for itself for years. Every AI safety benchmark/paper I’ve seen since sonnet became viable placed them far ahead of all other providers - marketing ploy or not (ala Apple “privacy” focus) the company has always had as part of their DNA thus far.

Personally I'd trade 50% of my wealth for a significantly large decrease in the chance that AI gets us all killed.

This reads to me like an "exploitability" metric more than anything.

In my experience hype driven companies are very resistant to that even when equity/cash ratio offered is more sane.

Nothing said that this candidate was actually hired by Anthropic, just that he or she applied.

I agree with the parent commenter – it's too on the nose.

If you were concerned about someone's character then you need to ask questions which really help you to understand who the person is – not questions which are easy to game by lying.

I'd argue asking something like someone's opinion on veganism is a better question because it might help you understand how the person thinks about the types of harms Anthropic are concerned about without being such an easy thing to lie about.

Obviously they could say "yeah, I think veganism is good", but someone who actually inhabited that view or was just conflicted about balancing meat consumption and the suffering of animals would probably answer with a lot more nuance that helps you understand how that person thinks about similar kinds of ethical concerns.

How does that diminish the observation about Amodei?

The difference is that most people don't make "Look at how altruistic we are! We care™" a key component of their marketing pitch.

Anthropic’s issue is that their concern for ethics constitutes a wall. They do not want to accept the potentiality of these tools, and somehow believe that a self-defeating stance will do less harm, even as these powers become more and more available to a larger section of the population. This inversely justifies their ownership stakes since they only benefit themselves under the guise of potential self-sacrifice that would be pathetic if it ever actually happened.

The market functions only on account of the law, which binds its activity and ensures the trustworthiness of the actors within it, and thus ethical practices are already assumed by the entities that operate in the market as the condition of their operation (since if the law is unethical than it’s also unjust and therefore illegitimate; such is the frequent judgement of those who live under it). Anthropic has committed the sin of conflating this principle with what is best for society, or humanity more broadly. What would be best for humanity is unlimited and absolute power over any and all external forces. The law, and the ethics which are presupposed within it, imposes external force on humanity—it cannot be best for humanity, demonstrably. And what is worse is, market advantage only appears when some (relatively small) increase in power is offered from some good or service, so something that fundamentally goes beyond the force of the law and perhaps even breaks it at the level of its intelligibility. The market is at odds with its own condition of possibility, it is internally contradictory, and attempts to reconcile this contradiction only lead to delusional behavior and appear fundamentally in the structure of the commodities which are produced for the sake of the market. What is worst is to thus be an idealist about the ethical nature of the market (“would you be ok with your shares going to 0 because we don’t want to be unethical”) rather than be an idealist about the potentiality of human power, which cannot be limited by the market if it seeks its own absolute expression.

Earning a livelihood under the constraints of capitalism is hardly the same as hoarding wealth.

I think what's inconceivable is that anyone thinks that these kinds of questions really work. The intersection of high-skilled people that can work there with low-awareness people that can't navigate these questions in a "politically correct" (for lack of a better term) way must be near 0.

"Oh, of course I wouldn't mind stopping if we decide that something is too dangerous to pursue. I think the mere fact that we'd get close to knowing how to do it would satisfy my curiosity. Plus, if we'd be close to it, I'd probably take some time to spend with my loved ones, as the competition would likely be close as well."

It's not hard to see these kinds of questions as more than kabuki theatre. I'd put them in the same vein as those "do you intend to perform any terrorists acts while in our country" questions you get while travelling.

No that is not inconceivable. What is inconceivable is believing that group of individuals is not a small minority, and the question will filter everyone else out.

We've known about global warming for 40 years. Please point to the industry, billionaire and other "people" who are stopping atm?

The question won't distinguish between both types of people, except for the bad liars.

Shame that machine didn't manage to erase Epstein's emails.