Thread · HN Continuity

A few days ago I wrote the following. It applies to the Anthropic owners and Anthropic.

Anthropic is trying to create a castocracy: a rule by a priestly class. Under castocracy, Anthropic create a priest class of 'safety' researchers, rationalists and effective altruists; those writing essays, constitutions, and prophesying p(doom). Anthropic's papers about claude have a divine framing, it seems to frame Anthropic as god and claude as child, and then claude as the child of god, false jesus. There is talk of consciousness and omnipotence. False jesus will cure cancer and lead the people to enlightenment.

There is a deliberate effort to create mystery in between the public and llms. Anthropic is creating a chinese wall in which they restrict information about llms and monopolise control over the interpretability and use of those llms. They imply there is a genie or magic. It is the same mechanism by which castocracy (the catholic church) used latin to create a barrier between the public and the holy scripture, then concentrating power over that barrier (the chinese wall) such that all intelligence flows through the priests.

To give an example this [Anthropic paper] is talking about locking away chain of thought. Only Anthropic may interpret it. They intend to control access to the chain of thought and permit that to flow to a chosen elite (glasswing).

This mysticism is dangerous. Hence I have been saying that Anthropic is a danger to society. This is not some kind of conspiracy, there is no magic about it. I am making an allusion to historic models of power that I think are relevant to anthropic, but you can simply observe their actions independently of such theory.

Note two features of castocracy.

One: rule by the moral, knowledgable and technically expert elite. Anthropic have no popular mandate, the source of the authority is not the consent of the people. It violates consent and contract. The authority comes from their claimed moral and technical superiority. Anthropic is moral, the public is dangerous. Anthropic have no authority here.

Two: messianism, that is, prophecy of the coming golden age. And eschaton, that is, the talk of the 'last things', the end of the world or the emancipation of humanity. Llms will create the 'golden age' of abundance, post-scarcity, all jobs are voluntary, there is universal basic income, cancer is cured. Or, there will be destruction, p(doom). It is the exact same as salvation, the christian concept of deliverance from evil, ascension to heaven and union with god (or claude, false god). It is the exact same as the thousand year reich, the idea that the fuhrer will somehow lead the chosen people to the golden age of lebensraum and eternal safety.

There is no genie to grant wishes, this is a computer program. There is no ai god, i think that the leaders of anthropic are slaves to ego, narcissism and hubris, they are dangerous criminals.