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ANTHROPIC, THE PARADOX OF ETHICAL LLMs & THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING INTERFACES By Berit Anderson Why Read: A primer on the strategic landscape of LLMs, big tech, the cultural lens of AI leadership, deep shifts in American culture, and how all of the above will impact the trajectory and success of Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google. ______ Unfortunately, Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, is not the only generative-AI leader to refer to the work of his team in Oppenheimer-like terms. Back in May, in an interview with the Economist, Clark described the need for a sort of nuclear nonproliferation agreement for harmful AI. It gave the writer chills. "When entrepreneurs compare their creations, even tangentially, to nuclear bombs," they wrote, "it feels like a turning point." Over the summer, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman followed suit, even more directly, musing on Twitter about whether to watch Barbie or "OPpENhAImer." He went with the latter, then complained about its somber tone as if he'd never heard of the 350,000 Japanese civilians roasted alive by Oppenheimer's creation: "i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that. let's get that movie made!" Altman's attitude in particular speaks to a deep, unspoken tension between generative-AI leaders (who consider their work incredibly cool and innovative but also potentially catastrophically dangerous sometime way in the future) and their lack of connection - or perhaps willing blindness - to the real negative impacts that generative AI is already having on the lives of everyday people. |
