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Comment by isatty | Hacker News Reader

You can't trust any of the big AI labs as far as you can throw them, and most definitely not Anthropic. They may have a good model, but they've shown time and time again that they're not trustworthy. The CEO has recently started taking a stance against local AI. That must tell you something: local AI is the future. If you want to preserve privacy and be ready for the rug pull, you need to run things locally. Unfortunately, that means that you're going to need Google or the Chinese labs to constantly release open models.

If anything, I'll trust Google more than any of the other labs just because the infrastructure that stores and protects user data was built over decades ago pre-AI craze.

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> …they're not trustworthy. The CEO has recently started taking a stance against local AI. That must tell you something: local AI is the future.

Or… just that open-weights AI is getting good enough to present a reasonable level of threat to their business. So it popped up on a SWOT analysis and they’ve started putting a strategy together.

This doesn’t need to be anything more nefarious or untrustworthy than a company putting plans in place to deal with a competitive threat.

That they have a process for doing evil things doesn't make it less nefarious.

If we define evil as a company having a strategy to deal with a competitive threat, then many/most companies in the world are evil.

Only corporate apologists would come up with a definition of evil so useless for anything other than making strawman arguments. The criteria the rest of us use is based on harm.

Having read what you wrote several times, I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. FWIW I agree with you 100% - we should judge "evil" on clear intent, impact, actions, etc.

Just like Nestlé had strategies to deal with the "competitive threat" of women breastfeeding their children instead of buying formula products. How could it be evil if it's just a corporation moving to neutralize a threat?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9#B...

I agree that Nestle's actions are evil, based on an assessment of their actual actions and not just the fact that they have a strategy to deal with competition.

Let's go back a step. You said Anthropic are "not trustworthy" and appeared to support this by saying "The CEO has recently started taking a stance against local AI". You then said they are doing "evil things".

I'm totally prepared to accept that any company --Anthropic or otherwise-- is doing evil things, but it takes a little more justification than someone saying so, or that "The CEO has recently started taking a stance against local AI".

No, I didn't say those things. I'm not the person you were replying to.

But I do think that trying to create fear and uncertainty around open source in order to neutralize the competitive threat is potentially an evil (or at least not-morally-sound) strategy. I think it was pretty evil when Microsoft tried to do it against Linux.

What do you mean “unfortunately”? What’s the hate for China I don’t understand

China's government is known for interfering with businesses waaaaay more than the current US, it's a big risk to rely on them too.

Edit: downvoting this fact without counter point is really dishonest

> What’s the hate for China I don’t understand

country that does not allow internet is being hated on the internet

and yet they have the most internet users in the world...

*intranet

They keep spying on our people, and only we can spy on our people.

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