Hacker News Reader

Comment by solenoid0937 | Hacker News Reader

HN hysteria is ridiculous.

All of this is totally understandable if you take the perspective that these people genuinely believe they're building superintelligence.

The overwhelming majority of the AI safety crowd - which has poured more of their life and time into thinking about these problems than the average HN armchair commentator ever would - understands that:

- you want to prevent China from getting to superintelligence first

- you must gate access of SI to known good actors

- and that this is a race that will result in the extinction of humanity if you fail in these goals

Literally everything these people do is totally understandable if you drop the assumption that they're lying when they say "we think we are building superintelligence."

View on HN

> HN hysteria is ridiculous.

> this is a race that will result in the extinction of humanity if you fail in these goals

Ah yes, the very hysterical take that superintelligence must be carefully developed, or it likely ends badly for all of us.

How irrational and hysterical of me!

How does it lead to the end of humanity if China reaches it first? You really think the US is more trustworthy?

What are the PRC's values?

How are individual freedoms in China?

What happens if you criticize the government as a Chinese citizen?

Is it a good thing if a government that turns its citizens into red pulp for criticism, or disappears them in the middle of the night, or bans access to most media, is the first to a godlike superintelligence that gives them de-facto control of (and impose their values upon) the whole world?

Or is it better if democratic nations get there first?

If the latter, which democratic nations are best positioned to get to superintelligence before China?

Can you substitute PRC/China for Anthropic and try answering your questions?

No company will own superintelligence. Governments will, just like governments own nuclear weapons (developed by companies).

So the comparison is with the US, not Anthropic.

The US doesn't turn its citizens into a fine red purée for criticizing it.

The US doesn't censor most media.

It is strictly better for a democratic nation like the US to get to superintelligence before a country that will gladly blend its citizens for criticizing it, and censor anything that dares to challenge its power.

Are you living in a cave? The US just sent someone to prison for 30 years for passing out political magazines at a protest.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/...

The US has a larger prison population than China. The US does not have a great human rights record.. Have you not been following what's going on at CBS? Have you never used X?

> The US just sent someone to prison for 30 years for passing out political magazines at a protest.

You are grossly misinformed if you think this is comparable. Do you know what China does to their human rights lawyers!? They get shipped off to concentration camps, get forced to eat their own shit, raped, tortured, and/or killed.

57k people disappeared since 2013, 5-15k more every year, and no one dares to criticize the government anymore.

If you criticize the government you get a friendly "visit" from the police. Do it again and you spend 6 months in prison without trial; again, and you're "disappeared" (to the same camps.)

You cannot even watch most media unless the government lets you.

If you truly think these countries are remotely comparable in human rights, your liberal arts education has totally and utterly failed you! Spend some time outside of the tech bubble for your own sake.

The US has not been a democracy for over a decade at least, and this is common knowledge. I find it hard to believe anyone's ignorance is so brazen. Regardless of the sincerity of your ignorance, the fact that the US is not a democracy undermines your premise.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

That is nitpicking.

The AI race is between China and the US. When super intelligence arrives it will be due to one of these two countries, since the EU has not participated in any meaningful way.

The US is clearly more of a democracy than China with a better human rights track record. For one, I can actually Watch most media in US without censorship. For another, the US does not force me to eat my own feces, rape, torture, and murder me if I become a human rights lawyer, or send me to a concentration if I criticize the government.

Democratic nations, at the behest of their billionaire patrons, are rapidly pursuing China’s approach to governance.

That's not exactly an endorsement of China's approach to governance now is it?

We still have elections and things can change. China would require a violent revolution to change governments.

Projection. Your account posts mostly negative or passive aggressive comments.

I suppose I'm sick of armchair commentators on AI safety that haven't actually done any critical thinking on AI safety.

Then why THE FUCK would we want to develop it? If you're so scared that what you're building will lead to our extinction, stop fucking building it. Why are you booster freaks so weird and psychotic?

He says HN is hysterical.

He thinks Anthropic thinks human extinction is on the table.

I don't see any irony, hypocrisy, etc. It's not hysterical to state that Anthropic believes this.

> All of this is totally understandable if you take the perspective that these people genuinely believe they're building superintelligence.

They aren't, they are building LLMs. They aren't even building AGI and they all know it.

Hell, even if they came up with AGI, then Anthropic's service model would become slavery so I'm not sure why they'd want to.

> They aren't even building AGI and they all know it.

That's a strong claim. Why do you believe they're lying about their beliefs? Have you ever interacted with the safety crowd or people that work at labs? They all seem to have high conviction in my experience.

> Why do you believe they're lying about their beliefs?

Because they lie about everything? They're adding more parameters to LLMs and pushing some more vibecoded slop on top of their harnesses, how do you figure that's gonna bring about AGI. Yeah Mythos has 5T parameters, but when we get to 7 5T it'll definitely become sentient bro just 2.5T more params bro you'll see.

Not to mention I still haven't heard a single explanation for why we could possibly want to give our IDEs consciousness.

He overstated it. Trying to protect yourself from being cloned by competitors just makes sense from Anthropic's perspective. It doesnt require a belief that you are building super intelligence. You could be building PracticalBathroomWidget#467.

The purpose of system is what it does. Can you read their previous musings about the glorious future, look at what they actually do, read Amodei's batshit insane nationalistic rants, and say in all seriousness yeah it's the kind of people I want to entrust my entire future life?

>you want to prevent China from getting to superintelligence first

I don't. Prevent, not even outpace? Why? Seems like you're assuming China "winning" whatever race it is effectively ends the humanity. Right now I think Chinese labs are way more mature about this, and Anthropic is way more dangerous than them. And how does it fit into the "for the benefit of all humanity" narrative we keep hearing? Is China wrong humanity? Who else is going to end up in the wrong part? Are you sure it's not you?

>if you drop the assumption that they're lying when they say "we think we are building superintelligence."

I never assumed that, I know perfectly who Anthropic are and that they believe everything they say as self-evident, without having any doubts. And I know they're the kind of people who can convince themselves in anything, because they're obviously smarter than everyone else, and become detached from reality. The entire US "AI safety community" was born in rationalist circles and is largely like this, it's a very specific cult. This is exactly the kind of people who are going to create hell on Earth for you and the rest if given even a lick of actual power, and perfectly rationalize it as a necessity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com