The degradation, polarization, and weaponization of or media landscape over the era of social media has left us utterly incapable of believing anything that anybody says.
Dario in particular has consistently been risk-wary on model improvements for going on a decade - long before he was CEO of Anthropic.
He believes what he is saying. Human beings can plainly say things that they think are true. Not every utterance by every person is a cynical ploy. Please at least consider the possibility.
> "Human beings can plainly say things that they think are true. Not every utterance by every person is a cynical ploy."
Every person, no, but every utterance of a CEO is, in fact, a cynical ploy. That's not even a cynical statement itself; it is literally a core part of a CEO's responsibilities to represent the corporation they manage in a way that benefits the corporation.
If he believes what he's saying, then when Anthropic is sued for their AI harming another party, his statements are evidence that Anthropic knew _in advance_ that their AI safeguards were likely insufficient to keep their product from harming people. It would be a blatant admission that they were reckless and negligent. That other AI companies are doing the same would not mitigate that.
I have considered it, I've been hearing way more of it that I like and it's rationalist slop with little to no predictive power: https://foom.hyperplex.org/
We've had enough utterances from "effective altruists" to know what they say and claim to believe is a cynical ploy.
This sounds to me like a cry for help from someone thats held hostage.
His previous self is writting this from the possition of his current self who is too deep in the economic consequeces to be able to do anything meaningful other than write a consequenceless text. Any other action would now carry too much personal risk for him.