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Comment by mindwok | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely think Dario is a well intentioned, intelligent dude, but I think him and Anthropic have a huge PR problem and are really out of touch with how they're perceived.

Anthropic in particular has developed this almost Orwellian like veil of condescending rhetoric that on the surface suggests they're looking out for you while underneath they're taking actions that suggest they do not trust you, Mr/Mrs Ordinary Person. All the safety rhetoric, never supporting open weight models, the lockdowns on harnesses outside claude code, etc.

Anthropic if you care about public good, do something to empower people. Release an OSS model. Open source Claude Code. Open source some inference tooling or something. Just give people anything except your words.

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> I genuinely think Dario is a well intentioned, intelligent dude, but I think him and Anthropic have a huge PR problem

Is this what kids call rage bait these days?

It's admittedly a bubble, but Anthropic/Dario still have quite a good reputation among AI tech workers. They are seen as principled and willing to speak up about AI safety and societal impacts, even when it affects their bottom line (such as when being declared a supply chain risk by the Pentagon).

and how does the public view AI tech workers?

Out of all the families of models anthropic by far has the highest chance of extinction level misalignment during a hypothetical hard take-off because it's trained to act like it knows better than the humans trying to use it.

This sounds smart until you think about it for ten seconds.

If an ASI model is 100% aligned to user intent then you only need one person on earth to prompt "kill everyone" for an extinction-level invent.

There's no logical way around this. The model either has to ignore the person at the helm or we have to do a multi-national abort before RSI. Anthropic is trying #1.

If everyone or even multiple competing groups have approx the same level of capability, it mitigates the risk to the group as a whole. We see this in biology all the time.

Doesn't work with certain threats. What the military calls NBC.

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

You then need another person to say, please don't, and you're safe again.

Yeah... Anthropic gives off big "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" vibes.

Working on a tool that uses their model and the Opus models are all guilty of this.

"Please run N tasks doing X for Y duration, I want to test something"

"Hmm but that would waste tokens, we shouldn't do this test"

What the hell type of product is that? I wasn't asking, I was ordering it to do something, if Anthropic can't get their model to do as I say then I'll just go use someone else's.

They are also good in the reverse, when you ask and they take your question as a free pass to improvize some code for lulz and extra tokens

That would exactly be my response if my computer would start telling me what to do. It is really a 2001 variation at that point.

I think it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether the creator of AI is a god or a devil. It will be hated anyway.

Because the reasons outlined in the article, plus many others. Concentration of power, unemployment, rising energy/living costs, stealing of digital artifacts owned by people.

I myself acknowledge that AI is useful. But due to the reasons above, I will be anti AI for the most part.

Yes, it doesn't matter if AI manages to cure cancer. Due to the reasons above, I will be anti AI. I suspect a lot of other people feel the same way.

And maybe don't allow the military to use your AI WHEN YOU CAN'T TELL WHETHER IT WAS INVOLVED IN THE KILLING OF HUNDREDS OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

They had a near-monopoly on AI-usage by the US military, then had a very public fallout because they refused to allow it to be used for autonomous weapons and mass-surveillance which their main competitor (OpenAI) publicly undermined by immediately signing an unlimited-use agreement, and now they also get flack for this incident they had no control over, because the US military decided to smear them after this fallout?

Should we not judge them by their actions? They selected the children's school as a target. Anything else is irrelevant

I might've been bamboozled, but I recal that happening due to outdated satelite images, not a mistake of the AI. Thus, a human would've likely made the same mistake.

> Thus, a human would've likely made the same mistake.

The AI industry and all of its sycophants in the Trump administration are working very hard to make you believe this.

context?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-it-wouldnt-deliberatel...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/06/10/ant...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...

No big tech founder CEO ever was or ever will be well intentioned.

Oil CEOs are well intentioned. A different kind of well, but, oh well.

There are probably many CEO tech founders of small companies that are well intentioned, but our economic system ensures that only the most sociopathic among them become CEOs of the big ones.

I don’t even think they have a PR problem, if their revenue numbers are correct. Sure, maybe in the court of public opinion, but time and time again it shows how it can be fixed.

Revenue is not profit, their competitors are catching up, and they have a lot of debt.

I’m not that sure if their competitors are catching up in terms of revenue and growth.

And we’ve seen unprofitability not being an issue for a lot of companies. Markets function in funny days nowadays.

I am 100% confident when Dario speaks, Anthropic loses subscriptions.

> give people anything except your words.

I feel that everyone in this small AI bubble (compared to the "normies") is busy trying to take advantage of AI to surpass everyone else, while fearing being surpassed by everyone else.

Most people assume LLMs are just a tool for making money, an arms race over wealth and social rank. But those like Dario seem to be worried that LLMs could potentially be used as automatic rifles by some dedicated psychopaths. Whether it could be that dangerous, or just an exaggeration, or we should have everyone armed, require licenses to own one, or outright ban them, is debatable. But I can understand his point.

All I can say at the moment is that this is more subtle than the superficial conspiracy/black-and-white narrative.

> Anthropic in particular has developed this almost Orwellian like veil of condescending rhetoric that on the surface suggests they're looking out for you while underneath they're taking actions that suggest they do not trust you, Mr/Mrs Ordinary Person. All the safety rhetoric, never supporting open weight models, the lockdowns on harnesses outside claude code, etc.

This line of reasoning is really very silly. I can be looking out for my young child by choosing not to put them behind the driving wheel of my car.

There are both stupid and malicious people in the world. If you have a tool that you believe may be genuinely dangerous in the hands of the wrong person, it is not the smart thing to do to give the public unrestricted access to that tool. Do you think it would be sensible to give every individual on Earth a nuclear weapon to do whatever they want with?

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