> In a lengthy essay, Suleyman praised Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and his team for being "thoughtful, principled, and intellectually honest people" - but nevertheless questioned the company.
I wish people in mainstream technology publications would get better at LINKING to things. That "lengthy essay" needs to be a link.
> "AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans."
> He heavily criticised Anthropic for teaching its AI to have human-like qualities, a practice known as anthropomorphising, which made it seem as though Claude had its own desires, values and sense of self.
> Suleyman pointed to the recent incident involving OpenAI's AI agents (...) as proof of why AI should not be treated as if it is human.
> "Imagine how much more dangerous they might be if they were operating under the assumption that their welfare and rights were under attack. It adds a whole further layer of risk on top."
Is he arguing that LLMs pretending to have emotions adds more unpredictability?
> Is he arguing that LLMs pretending to have emotions adds more unpredictability?
Unpredictability or a weight towards dangerous actions, and it’s fairly easy to understand why. Humans in distressed emotional states take actions and speak in ways that would not be considered rational. They do this in prose, and they do this in internet conversations.
An LLM trained on these sources may necessarily drift towards those weights if it is trained to behave as if it is emotional and in danger.
What do we do about it? Do we stop AI training? This is silly and not enforceable given its global nature in my opinion. I believe we should regulate and hold accountable those who deploy and use it. But good luck enforcing that in the current kleptocracy.
Microsoft is a big house, and in this case Suleyman's criticism of Anthropic's not-so-subtle attempts to convince the world that Claude has a "soul" is entirely correct.
Suleyman's description of how AI works is pig ignorant. All AI generates an emotive character between the user and the training data that is the AI's guess at what the user wants to interact with. Its an illusion at that layer- anyone who claims soul exists at a deeper level doesn't understand how the tool functions.
This is distinct from the very real safety issue of AI making dangerous information available to bad actors.
All these companies have a nauseating narrative around AI. I want to believe they are intentionally deceitful and not actually delusional. Hard to tell though which one it is.
Maybe true, maybe false. However, I sense Mircosoft is also jealous that their AI products are worse than useless. They'd be singing a different tune if they were in Anthropic's position.
That was my first thought as well. I wonder if they decided to pivot away from trying to compete and now are positioning themselves as the "responsible ones."
"Our AI is useless not because we're a dysfunctional corporate behemoth that slowly kills every product it touches. No, no. Our AI is useless because making useful AI is evil, and we're not evil."
First, OpenAI runs around screaming and yelling for OSS (and Chinese) models to be regulated and banned. Then Anthropic yells and screams the sky(net) is falling and going to kill us all, let's regulate and ensure AI has built in kill switches. And... Now Microsoft's turn. The rivalry is honestly becoming a joke. Can these big-tech corps grow the f*k up and play nicely in the sandpit?
I find it quite amusing that Microsoft has Copilot and now puts Copilot in literally *EVERYTHING* they can think of, then at the same time, they offer you access to Anthropic's own models through Copilot I guess MAI models (Phi?) aren't good enough?
Science Fiction has covered the AI panic in perhaps hundreds of stories. Yet we blindly recapitulate the plots as if we don't know how this will turn out.
Why has media literacy gotten so bad that people literally forget the concept of fiction versus non-fiction? Seriously, that is the level of small children and they are treating "read a story superficially similar" like it is a prophecy.
Clearly with a Butlerian Jihad and everyone getting high on spice while riding giant worms. Silly you need to even ask that question, didn’t you read the sci-fi books. :D
"Move fast and break things" is probably going to break things
I remember there was a recent discussion about "how complex systems fail" and there are usually many "proto-accidents" before the catastrophe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411370)
I bet with hindsight the Hugging Face hack will be one of them in this arena
> In a lengthy essay, Suleyman praised Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and his team for being "thoughtful, principled, and intellectually honest people" - but nevertheless questioned the company.
I wish people in mainstream technology publications would get better at LINKING to things. That "lengthy essay" needs to be a link.
> "AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans."
> He heavily criticised Anthropic for teaching its AI to have human-like qualities, a practice known as anthropomorphising, which made it seem as though Claude had its own desires, values and sense of self.
> Suleyman pointed to the recent incident involving OpenAI's AI agents (...) as proof of why AI should not be treated as if it is human.
> "Imagine how much more dangerous they might be if they were operating under the assumption that their welfare and rights were under attack. It adds a whole further layer of risk on top."
Is he arguing that LLMs pretending to have emotions adds more unpredictability?
Unpredictability or a weight towards dangerous actions, and it’s fairly easy to understand why. Humans in distressed emotional states take actions and speak in ways that would not be considered rational. They do this in prose, and they do this in internet conversations.
An LLM trained on these sources may necessarily drift towards those weights if it is trained to behave as if it is emotional and in danger.
What do we do about it? Do we stop AI training? This is silly and not enforceable given its global nature in my opinion. I believe we should regulate and hold accountable those who deploy and use it. But good luck enforcing that in the current kleptocracy.
This is distinct from the very real safety issue of AI making dangerous information available to bad actors.
Microsoft ignores that they themselves are a disastrous impact on humanity already.
"Our AI is useless not because we're a dysfunctional corporate behemoth that slowly kills every product it touches. No, no. Our AI is useless because making useful AI is evil, and we're not evil."
Apparently they're cooking up MAI (Microsoft AI), and I'd seen their small Phi models listed online. Calling Anthropic a competitor is hilarious.
And after that when they put a mind to it and pull out all the stops, woohoo!
The default for every major thing within range can turn into a wasteland real fast.
Well actually, it might.
I remember there was a recent discussion about "how complex systems fail" and there are usually many "proto-accidents" before the catastrophe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411370)
I bet with hindsight the Hugging Face hack will be one of them in this arena