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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
This feels like Theranos loading up their board with big names.
Except Anthropic has delivered a truly world changing product…
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.
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

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"And you look at that and you think that wasn't the technologies fault. That was the fault of the people who um who set up the political system that enabled it to work that way."

And that is what the public should focus on.

AI in its current state is neither fantastic nor a sure path to doom. It can be a boon to society for sure.

But a few individuals leading a few companies that burn 100s of billions of $$ to get the rest of society hooked (and maybe, dependent) on a subscription service, that is a problem.

For all I care it would be better if that were government-funded research, and results open source everyting. Tax the people once, society profits forever.

The way it works now looks more like an attempt at wealth transfer from the public to a few executives & VC's pockets, using AI as a vehicle.

Seems the Chinese are showing the way here?

8 months ago I asked this question, I will ask again:

Where are your browsers? Where are your compilers? Where are your databases? Where are your operating systems?

Can you point me to literally anything useful that works and was created by this world changing technology? All I see is dead project after dead project.

If you take them at their word, the people working on the current browsers, compilers and databases are all using it

Google self reports 70% ai usage in code, bun was fully ai rewritten to be rust

Let’s not forget we are talking about a world changing technology here. So when you tell me “some people working on some projects are using it”, I’ll pretend you didn’t say “all” because that’s untrue, you haven’t asked all of them, and the company that got bought out by Anthropic did their “rewrite-in-rust” meme, do you think it’s unreasonable to incredulous?
Now the goalpost is “all” of code?

I don’t think anything I say is likely to change your mind. You might need to get through this valley of depression by yourself in a few years and join the rest of devs using ai

Your reading comprehension is awful.

You said “all” as in “all” developers on those projects. You haven’t spoken to all of them to make that claim. You’re just making stuff up. That’s what I was pointing out.

If you are suggesting that we can call the Chromium project a work of LLMs because some developers may or may not be using LLMs on the project it let’s just stop the conversation right here.

This is becoming a classic case of LLM brain rot. I hope you come back to your senses.

Why do many AI advocates sound so, so much like the cryptocurrency zealots of the mid-2010's?

Is it something you aim for, or is it just the natural way of communication for people excited by a new technology, patricianly one they feel gives them some kind of insider advantage or hidden knowledge?

How long did it take from the first DBMS to get to Postgres? The first OS to get to Linux? The first compiler to get to LLVM? For Postgres and Linux and LLVM to become mature enough to hold the revered reputation they have now?

The jury's still out on AI, but coding agents have only really worked for about 6 months now. It's not exactly a fair statement to make. Obviously good things take time and thought. And understanding the full implications of technological advancement also takes time and thought.

No, that would be OpenAI (or Google if you want to talk technicals). Anthropic's strategy was just let RL on coding and jack up the price. I can only assume their real strategy is to speedrun getting the whole industry turned into a utility.
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.
Whoop de doo. I'm sure there'll be huge earth-shaking changes in their activities now, right?
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

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Yes I fear you’re right, power is addictive to most people, once they have a taste they want more.

Likewise loss of power is traumatic, picture the barely conscious 90 year old senator getting wheeled into congress to vote or something or other. Few ever give up power willingly even if they’re just a small node in a bigger system and not even really in control

> 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

I mean... if you put a bunch of anti-social people in charge of a dehumanizing technology what do you really expect as the outcome?

Palantir is a good guide. Their ad copy is frightening. "we will create the ultimate killers for total domination to make your enemies SUFFER"
Oh come on, like any other AI company is better? They all remind me of a comical villain - Anthropic the least.
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Hm, they are still the most transparent lab when it comes to publishing system cards and safety research. For example the system card for Fable 5 runs 319 pages.

The stuff with Fable falling back to Opus was a bad business move but seems consistent with their position on safety and was published in the system card. Is Ben Bernanke joining the board a dishonest move?

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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
So does this appointment signpost a likely industry-wide token squeeze requiring Benanke’s specific domain knowledge to navigate?
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.
What gives you the idea that they want to distribute the gains from AI equitably?
These guys have to produce a hit piece everyday...everyone by now knows that "we are doing this for humanity" is bullshit.
> everyone by now knows that "we are doing this for humanity" is bullshit.

There are people here in this thread that act like LLMs are the best invention since sliced bread

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.
I'd recommend they substitute him for a well known, uncontroversial figure like Klaus Schwab.
Big fan of Larry Summers here. He seems to be part of everything, Harvard, Epstein, etc.
Imagine Rupert Murdoch (95, worth $21.7 billion) arguing the pros and cons of job displacement and widening economic inequality caused by generative AI.
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?
Ben Bernanke would have figured that out already.
That's how I read it. Do you have trouble detecting sarcasm?
Good instinct — this is exactly the kind of issue we should keep an eye on.
I had conversations with Ben a few years ago about his economics research (incidentally related to some research I was doing at the time). I wouldn't have guessed he was close to 70. He's a sharp guy.

(I also think his economics research is excellent, and the comments elsewhere about his track record aren't particularly fair.)

Hires like these are made for their brand rather than expertise. His job will be to attend galas, schmooze with investors and be the face of the operation. The company will hire others to do the real work.
> The company will hire others to do the real work.

For 1/10th the pay, 10x the effort, and 0% of the credit!

Reminds me of Walter Isaacson, the Musk biographer. Supposedly he was hired by an investment bank after he made his fortune, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society [1]. Truly a one of a kind person: a biographer of famous people, an expert on financial markets, and a leading philosopher of our time!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Isaacson

Yeah, this seems like reputation renting similar to Larry Summers being put on the board of OpenAI, which turned out, um...very well I guess. For different reasons of course.

I guess it's better than him joining OpenAI, where I could see Altman being more "creative" with the books than Amodei. But I just don't Bernanke pushing back or blowing any whistles when things start smelling funny.

He's just old enough to be part of congress. Give him another decade and he'll be ready to run for president.
Any idea how one can join a board? Eating donuts and bagels with coffee once a quarter for 200k is my dream job.