Anthropic’s issue is that their concern for ethics constitutes a wall. They do not want to accept the potentiality of these tools, and somehow believe that a self-defeating stance will do less harm, even as these powers become more and more available to a larger section of the population. This inversely justifies their ownership stakes since they only benefit themselves under the guise of potential self-sacrifice that would be pathetic if it ever actually happened.
The market functions only on account of the law, which binds its activity and ensures the trustworthiness of the actors within it, and thus ethical practices are already assumed by the entities that operate in the market as the condition of their operation (since if the law is unethical than it’s also unjust and therefore illegitimate; such is the frequent judgement of those who live under it). Anthropic has committed the sin of conflating this principle with what is best for society, or humanity more broadly. What would be best for humanity is unlimited and absolute power over any and all external forces. The law, and the ethics which are presupposed within it, imposes external force on humanity—it cannot be best for humanity, demonstrably. And what is worse is, market advantage only appears when some (relatively small) increase in power is offered from some good or service, so something that fundamentally goes beyond the force of the law and perhaps even breaks it at the level of its intelligibility. The market is at odds with its own condition of possibility, it is internally contradictory, and attempts to reconcile this contradiction only lead to delusional behavior and appear fundamentally in the structure of the commodities which are produced for the sake of the market. What is worst is to thus be an idealist about the ethical nature of the market (“would you be ok with your shares going to 0 because we don’t want to be unethical”) rather than be an idealist about the potentiality of human power, which cannot be limited by the market if it seeks its own absolute expression.
Comments
Anthropic’s issue is that their concern for ethics constitutes a wall. They do not want to accept the potentiality of these tools, and somehow believe that a self-defeating stance will do less harm, even as these powers become more and more available to a larger section of the population. This inversely justifies their ownership stakes since they only benefit themselves under the guise of potential self-sacrifice that would be pathetic if it ever actually happened.
The market functions only on account of the law, which binds its activity and ensures the trustworthiness of the actors within it, and thus ethical practices are already assumed by the entities that operate in the market as the condition of their operation (since if the law is unethical than it’s also unjust and therefore illegitimate; such is the frequent judgement of those who live under it). Anthropic has committed the sin of conflating this principle with what is best for society, or humanity more broadly. What would be best for humanity is unlimited and absolute power over any and all external forces. The law, and the ethics which are presupposed within it, imposes external force on humanity—it cannot be best for humanity, demonstrably. And what is worse is, market advantage only appears when some (relatively small) increase in power is offered from some good or service, so something that fundamentally goes beyond the force of the law and perhaps even breaks it at the level of its intelligibility. The market is at odds with its own condition of possibility, it is internally contradictory, and attempts to reconcile this contradiction only lead to delusional behavior and appear fundamentally in the structure of the commodities which are produced for the sake of the market. What is worst is to thus be an idealist about the ethical nature of the market (“would you be ok with your shares going to 0 because we don’t want to be unethical”) rather than be an idealist about the potentiality of human power, which cannot be limited by the market if it seeks its own absolute expression.