I've read most of this.

I find it be incredibly self-contradictory. I don't even think this aligns much with the actions of the company.

> Second, there is a good chance free information really does undermine authoritarianism, as long as the authoritarians can’t censor it [...] A superhumanly effective AI version of Popović (whose skills seem like they have high returns to intelligence) in everyone’s pocket, one that dictators are powerless to block or censor, could create a wind at the backs of dissidents and reformers across the world.

But hey - gotta turn Fable off and stop it from doing any security work! Dictators shouldn't be able to censor it, but we sure can, so better hope we're not the dictators.

Again, the I think the problem most folks have with Anthropic's attitude is that it conveniently positions Anthropic as the "arbiter" who gets to make the final value judgement.

They desperately want AI to be a genie they can keep firmly contained in their bottle (excuse me - data centers) and which only grants the wishes they want it to grant - for only a small fee, of course!

Which he clearly outlines as "a country of geniuses in a datacenter". He doesn't want those geniuses spread out. He wants the chains on the genie at all times.

Which flies pretty hard in the face of the rhetoric that they want to promote equality and democracy.

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Basically, Anthropic's argument inherently leads to the conclusion that there is actually a dictator, and that dictator is Anthropic. You're not avoiding it, you're just praying it's benevolent.

All baked on top of the assumption that his "country of geniuses in a datacenter" premise is correct in the first place, which I find to be a fairly weak position.

The much more egalitarian position would mandate that we shoot for "a genius in every person's pocket" - one that runs on the hardware owned by that person, and not sold to them sip by sip from a datacenter. But that means they lose the control they desperately want.