Comment by lukewarm707

Comment by lukewarm707

before i comment, let me note the following. i have been saying that anthropic is trying to create a neo-aristocracy by establishing sole authority over access to llms. i saw another comment arguing that it is in fact an effort to create a priesthood. i now see that is a much more apt description than my own.

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 phrophetising 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 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. we disagree about the capability of llms.

given various tools, llms can independently complete a task. given orchestration they are very persistent. they keep trying until you stop the task.

i would suggest something like a 1/1000 chance internal astra and $500k of compute could kill someone. perhaps higher.

i can think of numerous online or networked targets that would cause death: trains/atc, industrial plant, hospital equipment, building plant. any dow company's intranet.

maybe get an iot toy to enlist a child? stress home automations to cause fire?

stop some 4g cars on the freeway. 911 dispatch software, turn that off. maybe send 500 waymos to a hospital, now nobody gets in. voip phone networks, turn that off. no phone, roads blocked, no 911, hospital computers bricked, everyone busy with something else.

break the cat scan by spinning it above its rpm. shut down mris by turning the cooling off. break the triage computer, break the notes app, break the scanner app. no computers, no calendar, no notes.

maybe someone connected a proton beam radiotherapy, turn that on in the wrong place.

some could be more insidious. modify software so the calculations are wrong.

you would do this in 24hrs with $millions of compute.

someone stupid connects their insulin pump or hearing aid. can dump all the contents at once.

i consider llms to be more capable per oai using them to hack hf. people have these systems online.

how would you cause death for a hosptial, likely the same way as you compromise the tailscale and prod kubernetes of hf, you chain numerous zero days at every product you encounter.

Replies lukewarm707 · 3d
Open on HN
Loading the discussion…

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com.

    About YAVCHN

    YAVCHN is a reader for Hacker News and Lobsters, with articles and discussions in separate windows or Classic pages.

    Created by Paul Parks and built with PUDL.

    YAVCHN source code on GitHub

    Help

    Keyboard

    j / k
    Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
    Enter
    Read the marked story in the article reader.
    ]
    Read the next story in the same article-reader applet. Back returns to the previous story.
    p
    Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
    n / N
    Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
    c
    Collapse or expand that comment.
    f
    Hide or show the story list.
    Esc
    Close a menu or this help.
    Access key m
    Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
    ?
    Show this help.

    Windows

    Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Use Window > New reader window to open an empty reader, or Story > Open in new reader window to open another reader for the current article. Docked readers keep their articles when you select another story from the sidebar. Minimized readers can be restored and reused for their site. A window's Next story link reads on down the list in the same window.

    A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

    While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

    The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

    The list

    The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

    Browsing view

    View > Windowed and View > Classic select the browsing view and save your default in this browser. Window view reuses a reader for each feed. Classic view opens stories and applets as pages. Open as a page is a one-off action that does not change your saved default. Use the Windowed selector to return an article to a window. Direct page links always open as pages.

    Applets

    The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

    They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser.

    Find

    Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

    About

    YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Pins, hidden stories, filters and layout are kept in this browser only.

    Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.