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Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

> adopt safety standards

Sure, but does slowing down the development of new models count as "adopting safety standards"? I very much doubt it.

> Anthropic believes their work has a 10% chance of killing all humans

This ignores the other part of what they believe, which is that they are the people most likely to make a model that doesn't do that. So, in their view, letting other companies win would increase the probability of human extinction.

> with one half of the frontier duopoly gone, the other half would have no incentive to race forward

I don't see how this could possibly be true, with at least half a dozen companies being just months behind what the frontier labs are releasing.

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> Sure, but does slowing down the development of new models count as "adopting safety standards"?

Of course! What slows down the development is the adoption of specific safety conditions the companies draw up. They can just do that, and it will hold up in court.

> in their view, letting other companies win would increase the probability of human extinction

Yes, I've heard: "We must be in charge even if we end up killing everyone in the process." I personally think that proposition is invalid, but we're all entitled to our opinions.

> it will hold up in court.

People used to append IANAL to such statements :-)

> I personally think that proposition is invalid

I agree, but that's meaningless in this context. I was responding to the claim that "if they wanted to pace the frontier, would simply do it", which is false, given what they actually believe.

We all have beliefs. Some more self-important than others.

Do you think their beliefs deserve some sort of special treatment?

> Do you think their beliefs deserve some sort of special treatment?

No.

> Sure, but does slowing down the development of new models count as "adopting safety standards"? I very much doubt it.

I mean, the point (if the claim is to be believed) isn't just to "slow down the development", it's to take more time during development to properly assess the risks the models pose, develop methodologies to reduce that risk, and standardize that across companies. I doubt those wouldn't count, especially in the eyes of regulators of an administration calling for that same slow down.

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