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.