We are actually spoiled at this point.
Anthropic's leadership and researchers continue to this day to post messages saying engineering will be fully automated. I can go find recent messages on X if you'd like.
This forum is comprised mostly of engineers, who will be the most impacted if their vision of the world pans out.
YC depends on innovation capital to make money. If the means of production are centralized, how does YC make any money at all from engineers? Such a world will be vertically and horizontally integrated, not democratically spread for others to take advantage of.
Now I don't think that's what's going to happen, but that's what the messaging has been and continues to be from Anthropic's leadership, researchers, and ICs.
Why should we support companies like this?
We shouldn't we advocate for open models where any market participants can fully utilize and explore the competitive gradients?
I don't think I'm saying anything controversial here.
Furthermore, if this pans out like it seems it will - a set of three or four AI hyperscalers - we'll also be in the same situation we have today with the big tech hyperscalers.
Due to a lax regulatory environment, these companies put a ceiling on startup exits by funding internal competition, buying competitors, etc. I don't see how the situation will improve in an AI world.
If you're a capitalist, you want competition to be fierce and fair. You don't want concentration of power.
I can see how an Anthropic IC might not like this post, but this should be fairly reasonable for everyone else who would like to see more distribution of power.
Low-information, high-indignation rhetoric is exactly what we don't want here, so please don't post like this.
It still seems you can make the front page posting these words as long as they're externally hosted. Or maybe it's the fact Anil is a bit of a celebrity:
If you wanna make charged statements, at the very least substantiate them. (To be clear: I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you gotta admit your language is emotionally laden and lacks substance.)
I've been seeing a lot of Anthropic folks talking (rather gleefully) about ending our profession recently, and it's getting on my nerves.
I don't believe their timelines or unassailability. And even if our jobs do come to an end, I believe in work after work. I'm just not a fan of the almost smug assuredness or their apparent crusade against ICs.