[kyledrake]

Considering their apparent nerfing of the end user plans in favor of enterprise clients, is Anthropic still the "more ethical AI company" like everybody loves to tell me all the time?

Assuming this isn't just a supply issue on their side, nothing says "ethical AI" like only allowing mega corporations to use it through cost barriers.

[estearum]

You really misunderstand what AI-doom people are worried about if you think this is anywhere near the top (or middle, or bottom) of the list of concerns.

[throwaway894345]

Yeah, it's positively precious to think the specific pricing strategy for consumers is the overriding ethical concern with OpenAI, etc. I don't have any particularly strong affinity to any AI company, but comparing pricing to say mass surveillance is ... something else.

[kyledrake]

Your beautiful straw man is negated by the fact that Anthropic seems quite eager to get back on the DoD gravy train https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/blacklist...

[jnovek]

Your original comment was about pricing ethics, does Anthropic’s connection to the DoD have anything to do with pricing ethics? They’re in no way coupled, one can be ethical while the other is not.

[andriy_koval]

even for Pentagon thing, Dario said he doesn't object military AI, but said Claude is not ready YET. I speculate he was afraid of reputational damage from cases if Claude would guide missiles on elementary schools.

[throwaway894345]

I admire the confidence with which you started typing a reply that had nothing to do with my comment. Bravo!

[estearum]

Where is your evidence that this is Anthropic backtracking on its ethical and contractual commitments rather than DOD backtracking on its blatantly illegal coercion (which it's almost certainly going to be successfully sued for)?

Talk about a strawman!

[kyledrake]

As someone that was in Minneapolis during the ICE raids, including one where a US citizen at a nearby restaurant was thrown in prison for 3 days despite having his passport on hand because he looked asian, it's hard for me to not equivocate the ethics of AI companies actively collaborating with the Trump administration as different flavors of ice cream.

[estearum]

Are the two analytical frameworks available to you just "black and white thinking" or "it's different flavors of ice cream?"

[ygjb]

Setting aside the simple fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, the reality is that regardless of how Anthropic feels, it is becoming clear that many, if not all countries regard AI developments as strategic technologies (and they should).

Anthropic needs to be at least somewhat in the good graces of a capricious administration that is already under pressure from businesses and citizens to regulate AI companies across multiple different domains, whether it's energy consumption, job displacement, military and defense applications, surveillance, etc.

If Anthropic wants to survive, they need to acquire influence with the government that most impacts them as an American company, and a massive exporter of services in the AI space to other countries, otherwise they could get locked down and locked out of the market for national security reasons.

It sucks, but sometimes the survival choice is to make an ethical compromise in hopes that you can still be around to make better decisions later.

[ericmay]

> Setting aside the simple fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

This "simple" fact needs quite a bit of additional context and work. Making grandiose ethical claims like this can be countered with other grandiose claims such as the fact that there is no ethical existence under communism or socialism.

[ygjb]

Sure. Why not, I'm bored today and waiting for some stuff to finish up :D

The fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism is not material to whether or not ethical existence is possible under communism or socialism. In order to survive in a capitalist society, one inherently has to make choices that require trade-offs, and those trade-offs are burdened by a history of decisions made not just by the people alive today, but our ancestors as well. Does that mean I walk around chanting "Reparations", "Land-back", or other calls to action? No, but I do acknowledge that there are unresolved issues and as a Canadian, I know we need to do more to resolve treaty issues, and environmental issues, and system discrimination. I also know that Americans need to do better to address systemic discrimination and many, many other issues. It also doesn't mean I want to give back my house, or give away all of my possessions. It just means I try to make good choices and support businesses and people that are open about the trade-offs they make and try to engage as ethically as possible.

Acknowledging those facts doesn't absolve us of responsibility, it's a framework that allows folks concerned about whether or not they are doing the right thing to accept the trade-offs that they choose to make and be responsible and accountable for those choices to themselves or their communities.

We live in a world with scarce resources. It's possible that with a foundational redesign of the global economy, and the requisite authoritarian government that would be required to force such a redesign, we could eliminate food scarcity, solve energy scarcity, and make sure that everyone has a place to live. Those trade-offs are probably not worth the ethical cost in political and physical violence required to accomplish it. We have seen the trade-offs that happen when the powerful are able to exploit communist or socialist governments. We are seeing the "late stage capitalism" impacts of allowing the powerful to exploit capitalism in democratic societies. Acknowledging that the current capitalist system has lead to the greatest prosperity for the upper echelon (financially) of humanity, and a dramatic reduction in global poverty shouldn't obscure the reality that much of that wealth comes from exploitation of people and the environment.

It's a huge problem to unwind, and we can't let the burden of every choice that we make stop us from trying to do better, but we (as in society in general) can't do better if we don't at least acknowledge the compromises we are making along the way, and try to plan to fix it in the future.

Probably a topic better suited to beer and a pub setting than HN though :P

[cleaning]

It only needs additional context and work if you are unfamiliar with the concepts underlying it. Possibly consider you are out of your depth here, rather than jumping to conclusions.

[Jackson__]

If you can't trust them to act ethically on the small scale, why would you expect that to turn around once it gets to a larger much more important scale?

How many government sanctioned school bombings does it take for them to quit working with said government? For now we know that number is somewhere between infinity and 1.

[estearum]

It literally does not register as "unethical" at any scale to have different products or prices for different customer tiers.

The question of collaboration with USG is a much more complex one, but is not the one raised above.

Edit: I'll also add that I doubt any AI-doom people "trust" Anthropic per se. The entire angle of questioning – again – misunderstands the AI-doom argument. You appear to think that if companies behave unethically, they cannot be trusted and they will not produce good outcomes, inversely: if they behave ethically, they can be trusted, and they will produce good outcomes.

Any competent AI-doomer would argue that ethics or trust are essentially irrelevant.

The entire problem is that people can act totally reasonably, even ethically, and this is not a guarantee of good outcomes. Situations can be created in which completely ethical, reasonable behavior actually produces a bad outcome. You do not need to assume people are bad in order to produce a bad outcome, and inversely you cannot assume that you will get a good outcome from good people.

"Arms races" are one class of situations that often have this characteristic. "Bureaucracy" is another class that we encounter a lot in daily life. There's a lot of them!

[DonsDiscountGas]

I don't think offering a product under a certain set of terms obligates a company to maintain that offering forever. The bait and switch is certainly annoying but seeing as they're very upfront about it you can't say you weren't warned. Don't like it? Don't use it.

[xvector]

Yup - who cares about x-risk or red lines for domestic mass surveillance anyways? I draw my red lines at prioritizing profitable customers when heavily resource constrained. That's the true definition of evilness!

[wongarsu]

I wouldn't call Anthropic ethical. But between Anthropic and OpenAI, Anthropic is the more ethical one

[brianmcnulty]

Why would you have ethics when you could get that IPO money instead?

[eli]

It's unethical to price it in a way not everyone can afford?

[MattSayar]

It smells like an architecture-related issue to me. They wanted to release the model asap, but they're still implementing the fine-grained controls to constrain the model to non-subscription users.

[dllrr]

They said they would release it back into subscriptions as capacity allows in the future. If they don't, people are going to point back at it and rake them over the coals.

[Maken]

The bar is just too low.

[fridder]

More ethical in some areas, actively user hostile in others