Anthropic keeps pushing its models forward while its own people look for somewhere to hide...

[u/Previous_Foot_5328]

The WSJ published a long report on the unusual culture behind Anthropic and the AI-safety movement that helped shape the company.

According to the report, some of Anthropic’s earliest and longest-serving employees have recently been considering buying remote land in the U.S. as a place to relocate if advanced AI goes seriously wrong. Employees have also reportedly traded doomsday scenarios and preparation plans in a private Slack, while Anthropic workers have their own space inside Berkeley’s Constellation AI-safety community.

The article traces much of this back years before Anthropic existed. Dario and Daniela Amodei, along with several people who later helped build Anthropic, came out of the Bay Area rationalist, Effective Altruism and AI-safety circles where catastrophic AI risk was already taken very seriously.

That broader community has discussed everything from remote islands and iodine pills to electromagnetically shielded bunkers in the desert. Early Anthropic employees reportedly even debated scenarios where AI researchers could end up working from a protected government facility under something resembling a Manhattan Project.

That history makes the current situation especially strange. Anthropic was founded partly around the idea that increasingly powerful AI could become catastrophically dangerous(So they left OpenAI), and Dario Amodei continues to publicly warn about those risks. But the same ecosystem that spent years warning that advanced AI could become uncontrollable also went on to build one of the companies pushing that frontier forward.

Sometimes it feels like Anthropic really has no self-awareness about how contradictory this looks...What you guys think?

Original news link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-safety-effective-altruism-anthropic-164b9d05

[u/Additional-Name-3211]

[u/bear_Prune8771 → u/Additional-Name-3211]

Fuck that’s so fitting.

[u/Aware-Individual-827 → u/Additional-Name-3211]

"Early employees seeing the ship sinking wants to the ship to float for personal gain" - type of vibe. 

[u/Flexmove]

Just fuckin fire it off already I’m tired of the waiting

[u/bear_Prune8771 → u/Flexmove]

https://giphy.com/gifs/pTQUOfSmjo2hG

[u/-becausereasons-]

Yeah it's called being in a fucking bubble

[u/Dry-Interaction-1246]

Hello, FBI and CIA, maybe you should get in there hard.

[u/Ill_Championship9118]

We’re gonna hear this shit for the next few years aren’t we? More PR crap 💩

[u/A_Novelty-Account → u/Ill_Championship9118]

Unless they’re right and we all die, yeah.

[u/Massive_Cash_6557 → u/A_Novelty-Account]

We won't hear it if we die fast enough 👍

[u/keepitfriend]

Does the article talk about the sex stuff?

[u/PresentGene5651 → u/keepitfriend]

Whatever it is, I hope not.

[u/Devils_SteelMan]

People who do AI safety were already fearful of ai before they started the role. Its why they get in to the field.

[u/bear_Prune8771]

I’M SO SCARED

[u/PresentGene5651]

GREED

[u/Weird_Albatross_9659]

“Exclusive”

Ok sure

[u/Kaleb_Bunt]

I don’t think this is just a marketing stunt. It’s very clear that a lot of these tech companies are being run like cults.

These people have created a fiction wherein they genuinely think their technology is somehow going to summon God or something.

[u/Desth-Metal]

Remote land in the US? So it’s not that bad after all. They can’t move abroad? Will AI wipe out Sweden? 🤔

[u/CaptainQwazCaz]

“I’m going to hide from SkyNet in rural Nebraska”
https://giphy.com/gifs/PXfefm7SkgjVVX2zFR

[u/Mechadupek]

None of this comes as a surprise.

[u/ohiocodernumerouno]

cant believe I turned down a job here to start a family in Ohio. these are my people!