He's 72 years old, I'm sure he has the best brains and everyone's best interests in mind. This is exactly what I want to see. I'm sure he will have very good opinions on technology and it's implications.
so the architect of government bailout gets a cushy gig. probably one of the most harmful precedents set and now companies expect bailouts. to bailout the company instead of people and small shareholders was always poor decision, emboldened the worst of the business class. don’t love this hire lol
Just in case Anthropic are looking for some more members that are a good cultural fit I found this list:
> Genie Energy's Strategic advisory board is composed of: Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States),[3] Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild,[4][5] and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.
Edit: don't get me wrong, I'm a happy user. But I'd also be a happy consumer of refined sugar in the early 20th century. I'm still not sure if these tools won't destabilize society to the point of collapse. I don't think we understand the complexity of what's going on nearly enough, and am certainly not optimistic about AI being net good for us
Your question implies a belief that things are 'good' or 'bad', but the reality of the world is a lot more nuanced than that. Pretty much everything that doesn't lead directly to human suffering can be seen as both good and bad.
Have people (smarter than me) come up with a good equation - or at least heuristic - to determine what inventions are morally good?
I suppose it'd be from a utilitarian perspective?
Ex: My gut feeling is nitrogen fixing would rank "low" on "terminal ecological impact" against "positive benefits to humanity"; the Vinyl resurgence would be around the middle; private jets for the Epstein class would the highest etc.
I was being a bit cheeky, but I’m not really arguing that individual inventions can be determined as good or bad. My point is it comes from the same underlying mode of production. "Claude is useful" and "the way we have organised society that led to its creation may be ecologically catastrophic” can both be true.
There are certainly ecological costs, but in the long run, Earth's life will only survive if an advanced species like ours is able to transport it off the planet before the sun expands and boils away the ocean and atmosphere, in approximately 800 million years.
Fortunately, the rockets for that will be helped along with the GPU capacity to run rocket simulations on. GPUs not being used to run LLMs can be used instead for physics simulations to help make those rockets work.
I for one am doubtful that AI as a whole has meaningfully improved the lives of just about anyone besides the few who have gotten rich. Meanwhile many have already lost their jobs as a result, even if AI is just a convenient scapegoat.
An AI chatbot diagnosed my rolled shoulders. I had assumed I had bad workout form. I would google "discomfort in upper back" or whatever and it would say "back pain after exercise means take a rest" and I would rest and it wouldn't get better until I lost interest in working out. It never occurred to me that this could be a medical problem, so I never asked a doctor (not that I had one to ask, as I was working retail at the time). Last time I started working out, I went to ChatGPT instead of google and it said "here's your problem, here's how to fix it" and it was right and I continue to work out and my quality of life has risen tremendously. YMMV
I would see less fake news, fake profiles and fake content in general. I would be happier, even if I would miss some of it.
It’s kind of sad how much we accept the idea of ”trust absolutely nothing” nowadays, even movie trailers for fictional movies are made to drive clicks for ads… obviously there has always been a large trust issue online, but with gen ai we entered a new era of it.
You can complain that the economics don't work out for you, but Theranos was a fraud, meaning they didn't have a product. Fable is very much a real thing that I can interact with over the Internet.
Someone here recently said, “Dishonesty is a core value of Anthropic,” and that aligns with my experience of the company as a user. All their talk about AI safety since the company’s inception now feels like pure theater, given their conduct in everyday operations. It’s a shame how quickly their image has deteriorated.
That's actually exactly how I feel about Anthropic.
They play such a PR game, trying really really hard to be seen as the good guys. It feels as another satirical episode of Silicon Valley. It's very clear they are all money and power motivated while also pretending to do all of this for the good of humanity. I have rarely seen that level of hypocrisy and cultish behavior from leadership and employees there.
I would honestly just prefer if they were honest about being power and money hungry instead of playing that game of AI Safety.
The funny thing is it’s so transparent. Like… is that the point? They want us to know how dodgy they are, kind of as a “** you”?
Often the point of propaganda is not to convince, it’s to demoralise.
On the other hand I could also believe that they live in such a bubble they genuinely don’t understand how it comes across. Add in a non-negligible amount of neurodivergence and maybe that’s the simplest explanation
> On the other hand I could also believe that they live in such a bubble they genuinely don’t understand how it comes across
Yes, at least until ~6 months ago that was my reading too. I felt they were part of the EA/less wrong crowd. Earnest, convinced they were smarter than everyone else, paternalistic, massively lacking in real wisdom.
Now, I think maybe they're still struggling with that but they've had a real taste of power and like everyone smart but lacking in wisdom, faced with the real world, all their idealism has become lip service and pandering to their previous in group while their real target (which they probably haven't even admitted to themselves) slips further and further towards gathering more power.
As another example of a tech company where something similar happened, see Google. Although at least they never started out with this condescending "we're here to save you from... us" vibe.
Dishonesty is at the core of Effective Altruism, which strangles a lot of the sensible choices Anthropic should be making. Although this feels more like, "anyone with socio-political edge worming their way in to suckle on the feed of imaginary printed money" more than anything.
Can you provide some context for this? I’m aware of SBF’s EA links, and how empty those sentiments appear to have been, but I’m just some guy, and it isn’t clear to me that the whole idea is dishonest, even if I don’t think it’s terribly realistic.
The government response to the ‘08 crisis seems to have worked out better for most big banks (low taxing of negative externalities, growing larger and more profitable), than for regional banks (consolidated) and the bulk of Americans (low median wealth, rising costs of housing/living)
Given the data on this[1], this is a confusing choice of hire to ensure AI gains are distributed equitably
If anything he would be for tightening it, but I suspect his role is less about being a vote one way or the other.
The value he brings is in his data, knowledge & analyses - which he surely has from the Fed - on the scope and extent of AI's potential rrisks in capital sustainability, market stability and wage/job displacement
He's 72 years old, I'm sure he has the best brains and everyone's best interests in mind. This is exactly what I want to see. I'm sure he will have very good opinions on technology and it's implications.
I assume this is sarcasm?
Good instinct — this is exactly the kind of issue we should keep an eye on.
Ben Bernanke would have figured that out already.
That's how I read it. Do you have trouble detecting sarcasm?
so the architect of government bailout gets a cushy gig. probably one of the most harmful precedents set and now companies expect bailouts. to bailout the company instead of people and small shareholders was always poor decision, emboldened the worst of the business class. don’t love this hire lol
Just in case Anthropic are looking for some more members that are a good cultural fit I found this list:
> Genie Energy's Strategic advisory board is composed of: Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States),[3] Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild,[4][5] and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.
Dick Cheney passed away in 2025, just an FYI.
Any idea how one can join a board? Eating donuts and bagels with coffee once a quarter for 200k is my dream job.
Already be rich. Sorry buddy, as George Carlin said it's a big club, and you ain't in it.
This feels like Theranos loading up their board with big names.
Except Anthropic has delivered a truly world changing product…
So did Los Alamos?
Edit: don't get me wrong, I'm a happy user. But I'd also be a happy consumer of refined sugar in the early 20th century. I'm still not sure if these tools won't destabilize society to the point of collapse. I don't think we understand the complexity of what's going on nearly enough, and am certainly not optimistic about AI being net good for us
World changing in a good way?
Your question implies a belief that things are 'good' or 'bad', but the reality of the world is a lot more nuanced than that. Pretty much everything that doesn't lead directly to human suffering can be seen as both good and bad.
Yes, absolutely in a good way
The benefits of modernity (electricity, cars, iPhone, Claude) are good, but they come bundled with potentially terminal ecological costs which is bad.
Have people (smarter than me) come up with a good equation - or at least heuristic - to determine what inventions are morally good?
I suppose it'd be from a utilitarian perspective?
Ex: My gut feeling is nitrogen fixing would rank "low" on "terminal ecological impact" against "positive benefits to humanity"; the Vinyl resurgence would be around the middle; private jets for the Epstein class would the highest etc.
I was being a bit cheeky, but I’m not really arguing that individual inventions can be determined as good or bad. My point is it comes from the same underlying mode of production. "Claude is useful" and "the way we have organised society that led to its creation may be ecologically catastrophic” can both be true.
Yup. Best unplug your computer.
Darn, I tried this and the lithium battery kicked in.
There are certainly ecological costs, but in the long run, Earth's life will only survive if an advanced species like ours is able to transport it off the planet before the sun expands and boils away the ocean and atmosphere, in approximately 800 million years.
Fortunately, the rockets for that will be helped along with the GPU capacity to run rocket simulations on. GPUs not being used to run LLMs can be used instead for physics simulations to help make those rockets work.
That remains to be seen.
I for one am doubtful that AI as a whole has meaningfully improved the lives of just about anyone besides the few who have gotten rich. Meanwhile many have already lost their jobs as a result, even if AI is just a convenient scapegoat.
You really think your life is better than 2 years ago because of AI chat bots?
If AI went away tomorrow idk if my life would meaningfully change
An AI chatbot diagnosed my rolled shoulders. I had assumed I had bad workout form. I would google "discomfort in upper back" or whatever and it would say "back pain after exercise means take a rest" and I would rest and it wouldn't get better until I lost interest in working out. It never occurred to me that this could be a medical problem, so I never asked a doctor (not that I had one to ask, as I was working retail at the time). Last time I started working out, I went to ChatGPT instead of google and it said "here's your problem, here's how to fix it" and it was right and I continue to work out and my quality of life has risen tremendously. YMMV
I would see less fake news, fake profiles and fake content in general. I would be happier, even if I would miss some of it. It’s kind of sad how much we accept the idea of ”trust absolutely nothing” nowadays, even movie trailers for fictional movies are made to drive clicks for ads… obviously there has always been a large trust issue online, but with gen ai we entered a new era of it.
You can complain that the economics don't work out for you, but Theranos was a fraud, meaning they didn't have a product. Fable is very much a real thing that I can interact with over the Internet.
Has it ever been proven that the board knew that Theranos was fraudulent? I’m speaking broadly - of course they probably had their own suspicions.
Someone here recently said, “Dishonesty is a core value of Anthropic,” and that aligns with my experience of the company as a user. All their talk about AI safety since the company’s inception now feels like pure theater, given their conduct in everyday operations. It’s a shame how quickly their image has deteriorated.
That's actually exactly how I feel about Anthropic.
They play such a PR game, trying really really hard to be seen as the good guys. It feels as another satirical episode of Silicon Valley. It's very clear they are all money and power motivated while also pretending to do all of this for the good of humanity. I have rarely seen that level of hypocrisy and cultish behavior from leadership and employees there.
I would honestly just prefer if they were honest about being power and money hungry instead of playing that game of AI Safety.
The funny thing is it’s so transparent. Like… is that the point? They want us to know how dodgy they are, kind of as a “** you”?
Often the point of propaganda is not to convince, it’s to demoralise.
On the other hand I could also believe that they live in such a bubble they genuinely don’t understand how it comes across. Add in a non-negligible amount of neurodivergence and maybe that’s the simplest explanation
> On the other hand I could also believe that they live in such a bubble they genuinely don’t understand how it comes across
Yes, at least until ~6 months ago that was my reading too. I felt they were part of the EA/less wrong crowd. Earnest, convinced they were smarter than everyone else, paternalistic, massively lacking in real wisdom.
Now, I think maybe they're still struggling with that but they've had a real taste of power and like everyone smart but lacking in wisdom, faced with the real world, all their idealism has become lip service and pandering to their previous in group while their real target (which they probably haven't even admitted to themselves) slips further and further towards gathering more power.
As another example of a tech company where something similar happened, see Google. Although at least they never started out with this condescending "we're here to save you from... us" vibe.
At least Sam Altman appeared to drop all pretenses of his pure sociopathy some time ago
Dishonesty is at the core of Effective Altruism, which strangles a lot of the sensible choices Anthropic should be making. Although this feels more like, "anyone with socio-political edge worming their way in to suckle on the feed of imaginary printed money" more than anything.
Can you provide some context for this? I’m aware of SBF’s EA links, and how empty those sentiments appear to have been, but I’m just some guy, and it isn’t clear to me that the whole idea is dishonest, even if I don’t think it’s terribly realistic.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/former-fe...
The government response to the ‘08 crisis seems to have worked out better for most big banks (low taxing of negative externalities, growing larger and more profitable), than for regional banks (consolidated) and the bulk of Americans (low median wealth, rising costs of housing/living)
Given the data on this[1], this is a confusing choice of hire to ensure AI gains are distributed equitably
[1] https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-...
The having so many tiny regional banks is a holdover from the bad old days when branch banking was largely outlawed.
These guys have to produce a hit piece everyday...everyone by now knows that "we are doing this for humanity" is bullshit.
Is he for loosening or tightening AI safety policy?
If anything he would be for tightening it, but I suspect his role is less about being a vote one way or the other.
The value he brings is in his data, knowledge & analyses - which he surely has from the Fed - on the scope and extent of AI's potential rrisks in capital sustainability, market stability and wage/job displacement
That's a funny way of saying connections
[wheeeeeeeze]
Whoop de doo. I'm sure there'll be huge earth-shaking changes in their activities now, right?
Prepairing another bailout, I see
Illuminati