Ask HN: Why People Support Anthropic?

[piratesAndSons]

In recent days, Anthropic and the Department of War have been having a back-and-forth war of words. What surprises me is the people who support Anthropic. Did you forget how scummy this company is? How they violated the copyrights of hundreds, if not thousands, of authors— the vast majority of whom rely on that work for their income?

Even if you don’t care about the copyrights of authors, this company is constantly advertising to your boss how they can save money by firing you and giving the salary they would have paid you to them. And you’re on their side?

Anthropic is scum. Regardless of how many dipshit “marketers” they deploy here and elsewhere, never support them—because the only reward you get as a developer if they win is your job being eliminated.

I know some software developers have deluded themselves into thinking they’re different from the working class. You’re not. Anthropic and others like them would gladly be fine with former developers scavenging in city dumpsters if it meant their shitty, stolen product achieved product–market fit.

[gigatree]

I’m sure you have good intentions, but that view works against the very thing you’re arguing for. Anthropic is leaving a ton of capital on the table, maybe for moral reasons, probably for PR reasons, but whichever it is they’ll have no incentive to scale back the unethical if doing so doesn’t earn them any goodwill because “oh look they stole books they’re just as bad as the AI companies creating tech to bomb civilians”.

The world is a dark place, better to reward any sliver of good than write it off for being tainted.

[parpfish]

and you can't really claim that they 'stole' books. they bought millions of physical book copies to scan and ingest rather than just scrape pirated pdfs

[xvector]

There is no satisfying some people. Anthropic took a stand that will likely be the end of them. Still, there's a whole list of other things you want them to do before they meet your moral bar.

Realistically, they can never meet your bar no matter what because you have decided "they are scum". You hold this view despite never actually talking with anyone at Anthropic or engaging their views in good faith.

To answer your question directly: Staking your existence on your principles against a vindictive government is a much bigger deal than pirating some books.

[recursivecaveat]

They're scum, but they're the lesser scum. Given a binary I support the lesser scum in every case. Insisting on purity is how we keep getting worse and worse scum.