At this point if news broke Anthropic’s office was bombed my first thought would be the US government. Didn’t they label the company a national security threat?
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%).
Pretty crazy. The security team denies there ever was a threat of a strike? And generally you do announce strike threats, it's kind of the whole point with strikes that your employer knows of the possibility.
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
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.
Same in Greek. It's "ekatommyrio" with a prefix of the order of magnitude "dis" from two for billions, "tris" from three for trillions, "tetrakis" from four for quadrillions and so on.
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?
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.
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
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."
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.
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.
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).
You absolutely can call them and make it clear that their playing games is causing you reputation damage ahead of an IPO — so you need that fixed.
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
The only relation Allied Universial employees and Anthropic has is that Anthropic is temporarily subleasing this specific office in Rincon Hill from another F500 before moving to nicer digs a couple blocks down, and that F500 has a contract with Allied Universal.
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
When I worked at a building in SF (where we leased, exactly like this situation) and SEIU demonstrated in front of the building, we were told to consider staying home just because we'd have to walk through the picket line.
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
Exactly. And honestly, most of us in white collar industries and managerial roles are aligned with SEIU organizing Allied Universal - their "security guards" are undertrained, underpaid, and are basically left to fend for themselves by AU. They absolutely need to be unionized.
Contractually, you cannot depending on the sublease, which is between the original owner (a F500) and I think JLL or CBRE, and even then is specifically veteeen JLL and Allied Universal.
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
That is why you need The Boring Company to drill your private bunker beneath a granite mountain. No bunker buster is going to reach the middle of a Swiss tunnel.
You don’t think Anthropic belongs on that list? They’re working as hard as possible to plunder most of human creation and disturb all human life so that they can enrich themselves.
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.
I mean, if you were already a security guard before the apocalypse, it would kind of make sense to find a billionaire bunker for you and your family, and just continue being a security guard in order to stay there. Whatever that entails, the alternative is probably so much worse.
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).
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.
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.)
Sorry, but I think you've kind of just dug yourself into some concept you think is neat but which doesn't really hold up. Like, this just doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
The end of Covid in China is interesting. Even the CCP, and their level of surveillance and control, were unable to maintain control of an entire population fed up with sheltering in place. If there aren't fair and open elections in 2028, it will no longer be the United States of America.
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.
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.
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.
Claude, I need a strategy for defeating unions trying to up their rates, please research union defeating settlements done in the past 50 years and build a case against them to keep our rates at the lowest possible.
You're wasting more of their money by using it. I've personally siphoned probably a few million in electricity costs alone from them while giving them pennies.
Oh no, they are going to learn that remote work is just as productive as in person work!
Bold moves and take from a company that values itself at $30T, maybe they should let claude do the security
sorta trenchant problem for big AI
At first I read the title as a possible missile strike on Anthropic's office by a hostile actor.
At this point if news broke Anthropic’s office was bombed my first thought would be the US government. Didn’t they label the company a national security threat?
The U.S. government wouldn't need to use bombs they could just send in the police.
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%).
Pretty crazy. The security team denies there ever was a threat of a strike? And generally you do announce strike threats, it's kind of the whole point with strikes that your employer knows of the possibility.
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
Lol at "On secondary markets, investors have propelled the company to a $1.5 billion valuation."
typo? or did an editor see the original and say "trillion must be a typo"
Maybe the editor is from Germany DACH, or similar?). A trillion is a billion in that language.
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'.
It's for the second grade htf algos
Freudian slip.
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.
The Social Network quote also needs an update. "a billion dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool.... A Trillion Dollars."
> 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, ...)
Here is a list of languages that use "milliard": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard#Descendants
Same in Greek. It's "ekatommyrio" with a prefix of the order of magnitude "dis" from two for billions, "tris" from three for trillions, "tetrakis" from four for quadrillions and so on.
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?
Yeah, in German for example.
Never heard of this... Any examples?
In German, 10^9 is a 'Milliarde', and a 'Billion' is 10^12.
The Wikipedia article has a nice map what countries use which convention (search for "Current Usage"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Brazil and Portugal being different doesnt seem stable. I guess Brazils usage will win out?
German: 10^6 is "Million," 10^9 is "Millarde," and 10^12 is "Billion"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Specifically:
> [...] giga- is always 10^9, which is 'billion' in short scale but 'milliard' in long scale.
In Spanish it is that way
Fixed it seems.
They are going to work from home? now we will see AGI in next months!
They should just give engineers PDWs and call it a day.
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.
"Claude, was this sarcasm?"
- You're absolutely right!
It is not as if they can't write encouraging prompts to mythos from everywhere.
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
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."
Strikes only happen when management has refused to negotiate in good faith already. Usually many times refused.
I think the parent poster is saying, "management, get your fucking head on straight and negotiate properly".
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.
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.
As I understand it, this union negotiation isn't with a single building, it's with multiple large staffing firms across California
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).
You absolutely can call them and make it clear that their playing games is causing you reputation damage ahead of an IPO — so you need that fixed.
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
The only relation Allied Universial employees and Anthropic has is that Anthropic is temporarily subleasing this specific office in Rincon Hill from another F500 before moving to nicer digs a couple blocks down, and that F500 has a contract with Allied Universal.
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
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.
When I worked at a building in SF (where we leased, exactly like this situation) and SEIU demonstrated in front of the building, we were told to consider staying home just because we'd have to walk through the picket line.
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
Exactly. And honestly, most of us in white collar industries and managerial roles are aligned with SEIU organizing Allied Universal - their "security guards" are undertrained, underpaid, and are basically left to fend for themselves by AU. They absolutely need to be unionized.
Contractually, you cannot depending on the sublease, which is between the original owner (a F500) and I think JLL or CBRE, and even then is specifically veteeen JLL and Allied Universal.
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
And there goes every single rational for having a security team at the disaster bunkers the billionaires are building
Congratulations! Your head of security has been elected president of the bunker. For your protection, no further votes will be taken
They’ll be armed Boston Dynamics robots soon
Bunker busters are not picky, and can be safely delivered from altitude autonomously.
That is why you need The Boring Company to drill your private bunker beneath a granite mountain. No bunker buster is going to reach the middle of a Swiss tunnel.
They'll thank you for digging your own grave and complete it for you by collapsing the entrance.
Would be nice if this kind of hate energy was directed at politicians, the military-industrial complex, and faceless oil barons once in a while.
It has been for 120 years.
Has it worked?
Why not all of them, you know?
You don’t think Anthropic belongs on that list? They’re working as hard as possible to plunder most of human creation and disturb all human life so that they can enrich themselves.
Personally I don’t really care where larpers direct their non action
Sees obvious capitalist revolution unfolding in society.
Ha! Look as these useless non-acting larpers!
https://www.apollon-dossier.de/dossier-ix/apocalypse-dos-and...
Presumably they'll have stuff there the security team wants.
Like security guards' families.
Awful, but not without historical precedent.
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.
There are plenty of people who have been killed by their own bodyguards, e.g., Indira Gandhi.
Fear the security guard who has nothing to lose.
I did almost write that! But if disaster really strikes, then just resources will be useful.
I mean, if you were already a security guard before the apocalypse, it would kind of make sense to find a billionaire bunker for you and your family, and just continue being a security guard in order to stay there. Whatever that entails, the alternative is probably so much worse.
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).
The security team have guns and aren't given a 2nd thought, kinda invisible even. They don't need to negotiate.
Don’t think those folks are union…
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.
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.)
Sorry, but I think you've kind of just dug yourself into some concept you think is neat but which doesn't really hold up. Like, this just doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
The end of Covid in China is interesting. Even the CCP, and their level of surveillance and control, were unable to maintain control of an entire population fed up with sheltering in place. If there aren't fair and open elections in 2028, it will no longer be the United States of America.
If civilization collapses, the billionaires are correctly assuming the security team will stop following SEIU strike authorization protocol.
They are perhaps incorrectly assuming the security team with all the weaponry will remain loyal to them.
that's probably dependent on the specific genre of collapse we get to enjoy
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.
> 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.
Would "one of you promises the security team better conditions if they kill a rival" not be how palace coups usually work?
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.
> historically, strongmen/chieftains have
Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.
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.
If civilization collapses, money is useless
Pay them with chocolate rations or higher status bunk beds.
Claude, I need a strategy for defeating unions trying to up their rates, please research union defeating settlements done in the past 50 years and build a case against them to keep our rates at the lowest possible.
"You're a world class Pinkerton agent .."
Make no mistakes.
Everyone should boycott Anthropic and stop using Claude. I'm starting with myself.
That isn’t very load-bearing of you.
Careful, he might have a blast radius.
Belt and suspenders protection it is.
You're wasting more of their money by using it. I've personally siphoned probably a few million in electricity costs alone from them while giving them pennies.
okay then, that was always allowed
No thanks.