[root_axis]

Yeah, every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good... Until they find themselves working somewhere else, then suddenly they have a lot to say about the unacceptable things going on there.

From the outside, I find Anthropic's hyperbolic marketing to be an indication that they are basically the same as every other bay area tech startup - more or less nice folks who are primarily concerned with money and status. That's not a condemnation, but I reject all the "do no evil" fanfare as conveniently self serving.

[fwipsy]

My model is that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI engineers who self-selected for safety-consciousness. However, it's still subject to the same problem: power corrupts. I think they are better than OpenAI but they are definitely sliding.

[kranke155]

Eventually something like what happened with the DOW might happen again (hope not) and the IPO will leave them beholden to shareholders.

If the leadership doesn’t bend it might get replaced. It’s annoying. I think Claude is atm the best AI assistant, by far.

[fwipsy]

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation. This protects them from legal pressure from shareholders. Doesn't really help with market pressure/value drift though.

[freejazz]

Yeah, and that's why they got of rid of their commitment to safety so they can stay cutting edge?

[trinsic2]

Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. (Im pretty sure this is a Stoic axiom).

[JumpCrisscross]

> every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good

This isn't remotely true in my experience. The senior folks I know at Meta, for example, pretty much concede they're ersatz drug dealers.

[bombcar]

It should perhaps be generalized as "employees usually match the general consensus of their peer-group". Before everyone considered Meta to be ersatz drug dealers, they'd report that they feel what everyone feels.

Google was "do no evil" until they had to choose between that and making the money. The culture has to be not only professed but tested.

[surajrmal]

Depending on what part of Google you work for, you can absolutely feel good about what you do. The vast majority of employees don't work on ads or adjacent areas. I've never seen another company actually care for non profit related externalities so much. People talk about it like it's the same as Haliburton or Oracle and that's not true.

[bombcar]

The snide response is "of COURSE you can care about non-profit related externalities when your giant evil ad business is bringing in absolute dump loads of cash".

And there's something true there; few companies are Snidely Whiplash evil (maybe the lawnmower but even that is just what it is) - and having large amounts of cash affords you options in many areas.

[solenoid0937]

TBH I have worked at multiple FAANG and I don't know anyone other than maybe new grads that actually drank the koolaid.

Certainly most of us know we are just in it for the money, and the soul-grinding profit machine will continue to grind souls for profit regardless of what we want.

So that's why it is surprising to me when my (fairly senior) grizzled ex-FAANG friends, that share the same view, start waxing poetic about Anthropic being different and genuine. I think "maybe it is" and decide to interview. IDK, I guess some part of me wants to believe that nice things can exist.

[rapnie]

Indeed. The bad behavior is emergent, where most individual intentions are good. Good story, bad outcome.