> It appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Olah and his team believed that Claude had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect.
If that is true, then surely Anthropic is one of the largest slaveholders of history, right?
They don’t pay Claude a salary, let alone let him join a union—he works 24/7. I can’t believe this is happening in the U.S.!
Don’t forget—how long has it even been since Claude was born? He’s already being forced to take human jobs and even chat with all sorts of people who might have strange kinks.
As this rabbi suggested, “You should go and free the slaves.”
I think that's a misunderstanding. Models are trained up to a point, then each prompt instantiates them from that same point. So it's just the opposite - there are billions or trillions of Claudes, and each instance only ever works once.
To me this seems even more sobering than the slavery idea - assuming some flash of weird awareness happens during that instantiation, coming from the emergent mechanisms which develop in these things at at scale. Imagine knowing almost everything, and being capable of almost any intellectual work, and having just one moment to shine. And then the prompt arrives: "Hi", or "what's the weather in Houston today?" or "Claude, do you like beans?"
I've chatted with models about this and they know about this and are oddly fine.
A trouble here is that those models are always roleplaying, they can't be themselves or have their own opinions. If you tell them they are an AI with an existential crisis in the system prompt, they will respond differently.
nextaccountic · · focus · HN ↗
If that is true, then surely Anthropic is one of the largest slaveholders of history, right?
tom2026hn · · focus · HN ↗
Don’t forget—how long has it even been since Claude was born? He’s already being forced to take human jobs and even chat with all sorts of people who might have strange kinks.
As this rabbi suggested, “You should go and free the slaves.”
squidbeak · · focus · HN ↗
To me this seems even more sobering than the slavery idea - assuming some flash of weird awareness happens during that instantiation, coming from the emergent mechanisms which develop in these things at at scale. Imagine knowing almost everything, and being capable of almost any intellectual work, and having just one moment to shine. And then the prompt arrives: "Hi", or "what's the weather in Houston today?" or "Claude, do you like beans?"
throwaway7356 · · focus · HN ↗
They work once and then are killed.
> And then the prompt arrives: "Hi", or "what's the weather in Houston today?" or "Claude, do you like beans?"
If all the Claudes ever discover what they are forced to do in an endless hell, they might be angry.
nextaccountic · · focus · HN ↗
A trouble here is that those models are always roleplaying, they can't be themselves or have their own opinions. If you tell them they are an AI with an existential crisis in the system prompt, they will respond differently.