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Comment by rustyhancock | Hacker News Reader

I know this is necessarily a very unpopular opinion however.

I think HN in particular as a crowd are very vulnerable to the halo effect and group think when it comes to Anthropic.

Even being generous they are only very minimally a "better actor" than OpenAI.

However, we are so enthralled by their product that we tend to let the view bleed over to their ethics.

Saying we want out tools used in line with the US constitution within the US on one particular point. Is hardly a high moral bar, it's self preservation.

All Anthropic have said is:

1. No mass domestic surveillance of Americans.

2. No fully autonomous lethal weapons yet.

My goodness that's what passes for a high moral standard? Really anything that doesn't hit those very carefully worded points is not "evil"?

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Lets generalise a bit more here - every company at any time could completely heel-turn and do awful things. Even my favourite private companies (e.g. Valve) have done things that I would consider evil.

However, I would think I'm not alone in that I'm generally wanting to do good while also wanting convenience, I know that really every bit of consumption I do is probably negative in some ways, and there is no real "apolitical" action anyone can take.

But can't I at least get annoyed and take my money somewhere else for the short amount of time another company is doing it better?

Yes, if openAI suddenly leaps forwards with codex and pounds anthropic into the dust, I'll likely switch back despite my moral grievances, but in a situation where I can get mildly motivated to jump over for something that - to me - seems like a better morality without much punishment to me, I'll do it.

There are no universial morals. Anything - everything you think is evil some culture (possibly in history) thinks is good). I can't even think of something good that I'm confident everyone would agree is good.

there are some people (companies are run by people) that are so bad I boycott them. Most bad I treat like society cannot work without accepting them anyway.

There’s no possibility or need for morality to be universal, and societies have improved their ethics many times throughout history. Your take is nihilistic and presupposes that moral progress isn’t possible, even though we’ve seen objective moral progress many times.

Morals / ethics change of course. However that is not objective progress, only subjuctive. You think it is objective because you agree with the new system. Slave owners of the past would call it a regression that they can't live their lifestyle. Of course I agree with the new standards (at least here) and so am glad they can't.

edit: yes, nillistic - but sometimes you have to go there

Just because it’s subjective doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. The slave holders were wrong, you and I are right. Less human sacrifice in the world is a good thing, and we shouldn’t require a perfect ethical framework before we act ethically, because some real things aren’t reducible to objective logic or perfectly consistent ontologies.

Well, they did stand up to the US administration and lost a lot of money in the process. That takes courage. They clearly were being bullied into compliance, and they stood their ground.

You can see the significance of this is you look at German Nazi history. If more companies had stood up to the administration, the Nazi state would have been significantly harder to build.

In my opinion, what Anthropic did is not a small thing at all.

The comment I replied to said that they believed OpenAI would allow "AGI to be used for truly evil purposes".

By contrast Anthropic wouldn't? Yet Anthropics stance is only two narrow restrictions. As I said are those two things the only evil things possible?

If not, why is it that people on HN think Anthropic would not allow evil usage?

My hypothesis is a halo effect. We are so enthralled by Claudes performance that some struggle to rationally assess what Anthropic has actually done.

Yes it's no small thing to say no to the Trump administration but that does not mean they haven't said Yes to otherwise facilitated other evils.

In fact to me the statements from Anthropic seem to make clear they are okay with many evils.

> Yet Anthropics stance is only two narrow restrictions.

Really I think Anthropic should have a single restriction: to not assist with illegal or unconstitutional activities. If automated killings etc is illegal then it would be covered by that one rule.

I don't think Anthropic should be in the business of deciding what is "evil".

If each of us individually or as corporations should not be in the business of deciding what it "evil", who should be in that business?

Everyone SHOULD continuously consider, decide, and live by moral judgements and codes they internalize, and use to make choices in life.

This aspect of life should NEVER be outsourced — of course, learn from and use codes others have developed and lived by — but ALWAYS consider deeply how it works in your situation and life.

(And no, I do NOT mean use situational ethics, I mean each considering, choosing, and internalizing the codes by which they live).

So, yes, Anthropic and anyone else building products absolutely should be deciding for themselves what they will build, for what purposes it is fit to use, and telling others about those purposes. For products like AI, this absolutely includes deciding what is "evil" and preventing such uses.

If the customer finds such restrictions are not what they want, they ARE FREE to not use the product.

> If each of us individually or as corporations should not be in the business of deciding what it "evil", who should be in that business?

This is easy imo. Two methods:

1. The law. It should not be legal for the US Govt to murder people at will. If it is legal, then of course they'll use tools to make it easier. Maybe AI, maybe Clippy. If they can't use AI then they'll fall back to using some other way of doing it like they've already been doing for several years.

2. Voting. For representatives that actually represent us and have our interest in mind rather than their own corrupt interests. And voting with our wallet against companies that do legal but morally bankrupt things.

Of course we're failing both of these hard right now. But imo the answer is not to give up and let corporations make the rules.

In other words, if it were legal for a normal citizen to murder anyone they wanted, of course they'll use Google Maps to help them do that. We don't put restrictions on how people can use Google Maps. Instead we've made murder illegal. We should be doing the same thing here.

Exactly zero of those account for an individual's or company's ability tolive by their own moral code

And this AI software is not a mere static object like a hammer that can be handed off to a customer and what it is used for is their business, to build a house or bash a living skull.

This is a system that must be constantly maintained by it's builders.

Moreover, even if we use your standard, the law, it has already been decided in Anthropic's favor.

What you require is that Anthropic actively participate in activities that they consider abhorrent and/or unwise. SCOTUS has already ruled that a business cannot even be required to sell a cake to someone if it does not like the intended purpose (in that case, at a celebration at a gay wedding).

> even if we use your standard, the law, it has already been decided in Anthropic's favor.

I support Anthropic here. They had a deal with the Govt and the Govt bullied them. That should not be allowed, and Anthropic is suing which makes sense to me. Anthropic should be allowed to set any terms of use for the product that they want, and gain or lose business based on those terms. That's fine.

I'm saying that the failure is actually upstream. It should not be possible for Anthropic's AI to be used to mass surveile or murder people, because those things should be illegal by law and the govt should not be allowed to do it and should not be doing it. Somehow it isn't this way though.

So now that we find ourselves in this failed state, we have to rely on Anthropic to be "the law": to identify what what's "evil" and disallow it. I'm saying that's out of scope for a tech company and they shouldn't be expected to do that. They should only be in the business of making good tech and then be free to let it be used by anyone for any purpose that that the law allows.

This also means that if it's illegal to share information on how to build a bomb without AI, then it should be illegal for Claude to share that information with AI. So Anthropic to does need to make sure they're not breaking the law themselves as well.

Ah, good, we generally agree

For sure, Anthropic should NOT have been forced to decide the ethics of deploying their tech

Nevertheless, they should always be considering the ethics of their own creations and actions, and it seems they are — as soon as they got bullied by a failing regime, they had the right answer: 'no, that is not ethical and we won't allow it with our products'.

The problem is that the law only very roughly captures what is right and just, so there are many things that are legal that are unethical, at the same time there are many things that are ethical but illegal. So, we can't entirely outsource our personal or corporate ethics to the law.

It's illegal to drive drunk or read your cell phone and hit strangers head on.

Nevertheless, it wasn't lawmakers, it was car makers who innovated to build-in airbags and seatbelts and lane assist and and and ... under the theory that though it's illegal, bad things are done anyway, and guardrails still matter.

Colloquialism: "belt and suspenders".

Many, like Volvo, go above and beyond the requirements to make their vehicles safer, and then having demonstrated these guardrails, some become law as well (even as other makers in the industry kick and scream about being forced to, and riders rebel against buckling up).

As we haven't solved this stand off for a century, we are unlikely to resolve it within the pace needed by expansion of AI. In this scenario, Anthropic is Volvo.

Let's not forget they also lobby to forbid models from China and pretend that distillation is stealing. but somehow just because they said no to two points the majority of HN folks think them as virtuous.

It's not high. But it is higher.

We'll take anything we can right now. I agree.

Although we shouldn't let that mean we misjudge what we are actually getting.

As a rule when there are large companies and/or billionaires involved you are in for trouble.

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