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Religious scholars met with Anthropic

160 points · 416 comments · bookofjoe

rhplus · 1791085720 · focus · HN ↗
> Anthropic treated a group of religious thinkers to dinner at a high-end tasting menu restaurant in San Francisco after a long day.
Well funded company organizes PR event to shape the narrative that its product is more magical than it really is. News at 11.
1. pstuart · 1791085814 · focus · HN ↗
  If they're training to instill morality why are they working with religious thinkers?
2. twoodfin · 1791086054 · focus · HN ↗
  Personally, I’d like to experience a low-end tasting menu restaurant.
3. ks2048 · 1791087107 · focus · HN ↗
  If it is purely self-serving, I don't understand their motivation.
  It seems clear that they would be better received by society if they claimed to have a "tool"/"machine" that can solve any problem, rather than keepers of an entity with a soul and consciousness.
  1. rhplus · 1791088595 · focus · HN ↗
    Selling the “magic” is how to sell tools, which is why I used that word in the previous comment. We all know these things are tools, but customers need them to be magical.
    Clarke predicted it and Jobs leveraged it. Customer don’t care how tools work - magic sells.
    “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
    “iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone”
    <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the...
    “magic is misdirection, psychology and technology you don’t understand”
    <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49950676">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49950676
4. frumplestlatz · 1791087187 · focus · HN ↗
  What makes this unique is that they’re arguing that it is literally magical. They’re building what they claim is a conscious God while also telling us it will end the world.
  The EA folks infesting Anthropic are genuinely cultists … and that is novel and alarming when they’re running a corporation of such size and reach.
  1. hardbass · 1791109192 · focus · HN ↗
    What part of that is magical? Can you tell me if they mean god as in the infinite superpower christian god or god as in potentially much more intelligent than us? What is 'magical' about thinking something more intelligent than us might exist?
    frumplestlatz · 1791124761 · focus · HN ↗
    The part where they believe they believe they’re either birthing a new conscious species, or may have already done so.
    hardbass · 1791129074 · focus · HN ↗
    And how is that magical? Physical systems can be conscious. These seem to talk and think a lot like us. There is reason to be conscious.
    hardbass · 1791129113 · focus · HN ↗
    You didn't explain the god part. I don't follow EA people, did you mean they think it could be a god as in the eternal and infinite Christian god or just a system that is more intelligent than us?

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