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by CodingJeebus 1 hour ago
> I call out Boris but I also don't think he's being malicious.

From a market perspective, he's acting completely rationally in his own interests. Bottom line is that these companies need to do whatever they can to keep growing token consumption because that's their goal.

If the nation's drinking skyrocketed, we wouldn't be sitting here wondering why the CEO of Budweiser isn't advocating for temperance. His job is to move kegs, just like Boris' job is to move tokens.

3 comments

I never understood this perspective. Just because a person's behavior is market-rational, it does not mean they can't be criticized for externalities.

That is, in fact, an important thing to do. It turns those externalities into public perception, which turns into market forces that adjust the behavior, if you want to think purely in market terms.

The analogy with Budweiser is not a good one. This would be the CEO of Budweiser actively pushing more drinking while the nation's drinking was increasing. And yes, people would be right, and effective, to oppose this (see Oxycontin).

> can't be criticized for externalities

As soon as you open up the externalities discussion, the wider question of increasing electricity prices and turbocharging global warming comes up, not to mention RAM prices. AI is a machine for turning negative externalities into stock prices.

Of course they can be criticized, we can criticize the ExxonMobil CEO the same way and get nowhere

The point is, blaming them is pointless, if it wasn't them it would be someone else. How do we react?

"If it's not them it would be someone else" probably should just be shorthanded to the banality of evil. But to answer your question, idk, sensible regulations? (Knowing full well this just kicks the buck of responsibility down the chain)
His job is to do what’s in the long term interests of his company.

[Edit: was thinking of the ‘CEO’. This doesn’t apply as cleanly to Boris.]

FWIW, the CEO doesn't seem to be the CEO? If I understand what I read properly, he has one direct report — his "chief of staff". So arguably the true chief executive in a functional sense (the person to whom the organisation ultimately reports through hierarchy) is his sister, who appears to be grounded in reality.

I suspect that the reason Anthropic is generating such developer-negative, toxic, insensitive influencer sentiments like these from Boris has to do with Dario being a fantasy-fiction-reading quasi-mascot who thinks it's his job to tell scary stories, who is being allowed to do just that by a sibling who perhaps prefers he's not involved in the day-to-day.

Respectfully disagree. From my view, the tech industry hasn't behaved in a way that regards long-term interests over short-term interests in a very, very long time. Much of the innovation is simply finding new and creative ways to shrink this loop even further, and vibe-coding/slop is just the latest manifestation of that.
> we wouldn't be sitting here wondering why the CEO of Budweiser isn't advocating for temperance

But we would start to wonder if the CEO of Budweiser started advocating binge drinking.