I don't really agree with their point here, but there are plenty of people in the AI community whose views are aligned with Anthropic's. That doesn't make them shills.
It's actually important those views are put forward.
A place like LessWrong has the opposite problem - there is no one there who questions the "safety narrative" so the discussion swings more and more towards the extreme end of that spectrum.
I hate to accuse people of shilling (and HN hates those accusations as well, policy-wise). And there are ways to defend Amodei's point, or at least there would be if he and his friends hadn't been beating the same drum since GPT2.
But I tend to agree, just saying it's a "pretty reasonable statement" and leaving it at that is beyond the pale for anyone who doesn't have an undisclosed stake in the argument.
This is like the most milquetoast stance in the AI safety community. It's great the Trump admin did something, no one expected them to, and they should have done more. Very powerful tools released to the public should be regulated for safety.
That is "pretty reasonable" to most people (except the tech-libertarian crowd).
I don't really agree with their point here, but there are plenty of people in the AI community whose views are aligned with Anthropic's. That doesn't make them shills.
It's actually important those views are put forward.
A place like LessWrong has the opposite problem - there is no one there who questions the "safety narrative" so the discussion swings more and more towards the extreme end of that spectrum.