9 comments

  • geori 1 hour ago
    Lol at "On secondary markets, investors have propelled the company to a $1.5 billion valuation."
    • flohofwoe 42 minutes ago
      Most likely a typo (fixed by now), but in some (most?) non-English languages billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9, usually the error happens when translating from English though, not into English.
      • HeavyStorm 3 minutes ago
        Never heard of this... Any examples?
      • cassianoleal 38 minutes ago
        > billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9

        Is it? In Portuguese it's thousand, million, billion, trillion... (Milhar, milhão, bilhão, trilhão, ...)

        • flohofwoe 12 minutes ago
          Apparently it's different between Portugal and Brazil? (e.g. Portugal => long-scale, Brazil => short-scale - but that's just what ChatGPT is telling me). E.g. maybe it's more of a 'Europe-except-UK vs Americas' thing?
    • jasonjmcghee 1 hour ago
      typo? or did an editor see the original and say "trillion must be a typo"
      • irthomasthomas 48 minutes ago
        I imagine the logprob of b is much greater than t in this context for most models. So 'trillion' gets corrected to the more likely 'billion'.
      • zarzavat 46 minutes ago
        Freudian slip.
    • lukan 52 minutes ago
      Fixed it seems.
  • doughnutstracks 1 hour ago
    At first I read the title as a possible missile strike on Anthropic's office by a hostile actor.
    • wrash-qwtr 43 minutes ago
      If it happened, they better don't run polls for popular support. If the building were empty at the time of the strike, you'd probably get 70% among college students (Luigi had 41%).
    • coredog64 46 minutes ago
      One can always hope
  • mandarinclips 59 minutes ago
    Everyone should boycott Anthropic and stop using Claude. I'm starting with myself.
  • zeafoamrun 49 minutes ago
    They should just give engineers PDWs and call it a day.
  • bediger4000 1 hour ago
    Wow, this is bad news. Without in-office collaboration, company culture will collapse. The organic moments of spontaneous synergy won't take place. Perhaps OpenAI or even xAI will take over as leading company. Grim.
    • fluxusars 1 hour ago
      "Claude, was this sarcasm?"

      - You're absolutely right!

  • ReptileMan 1 hour ago
    It is not as if they can't write encouraging prompts to mythos from everywhere.
    • dgellow 44 minutes ago
      Imagine a world where 20% of the world compute is allocated to cheerleader-agents encouraging the other agents, and that’s the actual secret recipe to build an AGI
  • bbor 1 hour ago
    The idea of Anthropic allowing a contractor to squeeze such a tiny cost center at such a massive PR cost right before their IPO is just an objective blunder, IMHO. They should've replied to that email with a quick "No, you will be negotiating with the union tomorrow morning. You maybe eventually saving millions right now could cost us literally billions."
    • kennywinker 1 hour ago
      Strikes only happen when management has refused to negotiate in good faith already. Usually many times refused.
      • forestrywat 1 hour ago
        I think the parent poster is saying, "management, get your fucking head on straight and negotiate properly".
    • alephnerd 1 hour ago
      Ik the building intimately - it's not Anthroptic but the building's security company (which Anthropic does not own and is subleasing). SEIU is working to organize Allied Universal in California.

      Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.

      • forestrywat 1 hour ago
        So you go to the building owner and say, "give them what they want or we walk." Security team probably doesn't want outrageous changes. Building owner probably just being greedy.
        • t098i3 1 hour ago
          As I understand it, this union negotiation isn't with a single building, it's with multiple large staffing firms across California
        • alephnerd 1 hour ago
          You can't in most cases. These buildings are owned by larger conglomerates and are out of scope of landlord-leasee negotiations especially as it's a sublease.

          Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).

          • AnimalMuppet 37 minutes ago
            So Anthropic, because they don't own the building, is unable to solve this by throwing money at it? I find that amusing.

            Except they can. Anthropic could just hire their own security for when the other guys go on strike.

  • wonderwonder 1 hour ago
    And there goes every single rational for having a security team at the disaster bunkers the billionaires are building
    • derwiki 1 hour ago
      They’ll be armed Boston Dynamics robots soon
    • philipallstar 1 hour ago
      Presumably they'll have stuff there the security team wants.
      • deadbunny 1 hour ago
        The security team have guns and aren't given a 2nd thought, kinda invisible even. They don't need to negotiate.
      • zbentley 1 hour ago
        Like security guards' families.

        Awful, but not without historical precedent.

        • somenameforme 1 hour ago
          Which precedent?

          Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.

          • jcranmer 33 minutes ago
            There are plenty of people who have been killed by their own bodyguards, e.g., Indira Gandhi.
        • Tade0 1 hour ago
          Fear the security guard who has nothing to lose.
        • philipallstar 1 hour ago
          I did almost write that! But if disaster really strikes, then just resources will be useful.
        • stymaar 48 minutes ago
          And who guards the guards family?

          These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.

          When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).

    • sailfast 1 hour ago
      Don’t think those folks are union…
    • tracerbulletx 1 hour ago
      There have been plenty of times in history (almost all times) that physically weaker men have secured the loyalty of soldiers with wealth and influence during periods where strong centralized civic authorities did not exist.
      • js8 43 minutes ago
        But the soldiers didn't have the mobile phones then. This was possible by manipulation the information about reality those soldiers had.

        For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate.

        First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit.

        Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits.

        This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat.

        With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other.

        Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone.

        (This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)

    • bpodgursky 1 hour ago
      If civilization collapses, the billionaires are correctly assuming the security team will stop following SEIU strike authorization protocol.
      • ceejayoz 1 hour ago
        They are perhaps incorrectly assuming the security team with all the weaponry will remain loyal to them.
        • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
          that's probably dependent on the specific genre of collapse we get to enjoy
        • bpodgursky 1 hour ago
          Sure. Who knows.

          But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.

          • ceejayoz 1 hour ago
            > But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control.

            Sure. But some of them seize power from others on their way up via force.

          • nemomarx 1 hour ago
            Would "one of you promises the security team better conditions if they kill a rival" not be how palace coups usually work?
            • GolfPopper 29 minutes ago
              My recollection from Roman history is that was certainly a part of it, but that 'I command the palace guard, so I should command the empire' also played a large role.
          • stymaar 45 minutes ago
            > historically, strongmen/chieftains have

            Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.

      • dayvid 1 hour ago
        Just pay them well enough. Or pay the people at the top a good amount of money to keep the people below in check and have some hope you can rise to the top for a small portion of the people.
        • inigyou 1 hour ago
          If civilization collapses, money is useless
  • creatune 1 hour ago
    [dead]