[whstl]

> Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are

After 20 years of everyone in this industry saying "we want to make the world a better place" and doing the opposite, the problem here is not really related to people's "understanding".

And before the default answer kicks in: this is not cynicism. Plenty of folks here on HN and elsewhere legitimately believe that it's possible to do good with tech. But a billion dollar behemoth with great PR isn't that.

[dust42]

Exactly. At this level you don't just put out a statement of your personal opinion. This is run through PR and coordinated with the investors. Otherwise the CEO finds himself on the street by tomorrow. Whatever their motives are, it is aligned with VC, because if it is not then the next day there is another CEO. As the parent stated, this is not cynicism. I see this just rather factual, it is simply the laws of money.

[GorbachevyChase]

I am suspicious the whole thing is a PR stunt to build public trust.

[heresie-dabord]

> it is simply the laws of money

The First Law of Money: Money buys the Law.

[qdotme]

FWIW, I don’t actually know if board of Anthropic has actual power to replace its CEO or if Dario has retained some form of personal super-control shares Zuckerberg style.

At some level of growth, the dynamics between competent founders and shareholders flip. Even if the board could afford to replace a CEO, it might not be worth it.

[Lutger]

Surely you mean the laws of shareholder capitalism. There are many things you can do with money, and only some of them are legally backed by rules that ensure absolute shareholder power.

[vladms]

> everyone in this industry

So in the last 20 years there is nothing good coming out of the software industry (if this is the industry you mention) ?

I find it somehow ironic, because this type of generalization is for me the same issue that some of the people saying "they want to make a better place" have: accept reality is complex.

There were huge benefits for society from the software industry in the last 20 years. There were (as well!) huge downsides. Around 2000 lots of people were "Microsoft will lock us in forever". 20 years later, the fear "moved" to other things. Imagining that companies can last forever seems misguided. IBM, Intel, Nokia and others were once great and the only ones but ultimately got copied and pushed from the spotlight.

[whstl]

Everyone in this industry making a certain bullshit claim. I did qualify my statement. Don’t cut my words to make a strawman.

Additionally I state in the end that I do believe it’s possible.

[amunozo]

I don't even think both things are contradictory. People that put too much value in their ideals tend to oversee the consequences of such ideals in real life and do wrong without deviating an inch from their ideals.

[plufz]

But is that really the problem in big tech today? To me it looks like sooner or later they cave from their ideals (or leadership changes) and that the reason every time is that they want to make even more money.

[hsuduebc2]

I can’t think of a single thing Meta does that isn’t driven by pure greed.

[OtherShrezzing]

I think most people are conscious that, irrespective of a founders vision, company morals usually don't survive the MBA-inisation phase of a company's growth.

[qdotme]

Depends. Many still reflect the founders vision; even if that vision might have evolved over time.

[j45]

The impact of MBAs might be decreasing..

[whstl]

True. Which is all the more reason for calling bullshit on claims of "doing good" or "having ideals" by anyone building a company that can eventually be ran my MBAs.

[mcv]

Exactly. I'd love to believe that at Anthropic, idealism trumps money. But Google was once idealistic too. OpenAI was too. It's really hard to resist the pull of money. Especially if you're a for-profit corporation, but OpenAI wasn't even that at first.

[Aperocky]

Reminds me of Effective Altruism and the collective results of people claiming to believe in that virtue.

[tristor]

> Plenty of folks here on HN and elsewhere legitimately believe that it's possible to do good with tech. But a billion dollar behemoth with great PR isn't that.

To expand on that a bit, many of us (myself included) fully believe founders set out with lofty and good goals when organizations are small. Scale is power, and power corrupts. It's as simple as that. It's an exceptionally rare quality to resist that corruption, and everyone has a breaking point. We understand humans because we are humans, and we understand that large organizations, especially corporations, are fundamentally incapable of acting morally (in fact corporations are inherently amoral).

[whstl]

Yep, exactly. That's the gist of it.

Scale is also what's killing jobs, ruining human relationships, fucking up societies. Et cetera.

[tyingq]

I don't think it's cynical to acknowledge the pattern that publicly owned companies will eventually cave to the desires of their shareholders.

I understand Anthropic is not public, but I assume there's an IPO coming.

[wartywhoa23]

Cynicism is the newspeak substitute for sincerity, no need to worry about being called a cynic in this post-truth world of snowflakes.

[5o1ecist]

> not related to people's "understanding".

Except for the understanding that it's foolish to believe anything that sounds too good to be true. Yes, believing that people who want to make money/achieve positions of power, also want to make the world a better place, is absolutely foolish. Ridiculously foolish.

[lebovic]

I don't think it's cynical to believe that a company can make the world a worse place, or that Anthropic as a company will make many horrible choices.

I do think it's cynical to believe that people, and groups of people, can't be motivated by more than money.

[personjerry]

At some point I've wondered if "fiduciary duty", when pushed to highest corporate levels, always conflicts with "make the world a better place"

i.e. Fiduciary Duty Considered Harmful

[jug]

This is a component for sure, but also think of why Anthropic was born. It exists because of disagreements with OpenAI on the values of AI safety and principles.

[puppymaster]

and that's okay. so we judge them one decision at a time. So far, Anthropic is good in my book.