[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?"

[kyledrake]

Are the personal attacks really necessary to make your argument?

[estearum]

Fair point! Edited to remove.

[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

[ericmay]

> The fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

I don't believe that this is a fact. How are you demonstrating that this is a fact?

When you talk about things like reparations or "land back" you're already cargo-culting in concepts and ideas that themselves need to be fleshed out in order to make a subsequent claim that a specific economic system is unethical. Someone can just argue all economic systems are unethical, how are you going to defend against that? And can you pay reparations for example without going back in all of human history and finding all cases of injustices and then tallying it up? Why pick an arbitrary point in time? Better yet, why not start in countries where slavery still exists instead of focusing on the west which led the world in abolishing slavery and created concepts such as universal human rights.

Even with respect to "eliminating food scarcity" - eliminate in what sense? All olive groves and grapevines and rice farms have to be destroyed and rebuilt to only build certain foods?

Dabbling in communism or other inhumane and authoritarian governmental systems is extremely dangerous and in the same vein of extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, suggesting as you did creating an authoritarian government to create a utopia is precisely the same project of suffering and death that mass murderers throughout history have undertaken to abject failure, and thus, you need some incredible amount of evidence and theory to be able to even fairly suggest going down this path.

[ygjb]

It's simple, I am not going to defend any economic system because they all require trade-offs, because any economic model that we could currently implement must necessarily ration scarce resources according to some set of rules. Those rules will explicitly deny someone else resources, and the adminstration of that economy will also be subject to abuse by the people who enforce the rules.

I am not going to do the work of gathering the evidence for you, and I don't think this is the right venue for a debate on the topic.

[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.

[ericmay]

No that's incorrect. Instead I believe the underlying concepts are debatable and so stating it as a "simple fact" is a bit unfair.