Reuters on Anthropic’s IPO filing:

Anthropic plans to caution potential investors in its ​IPO that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” an extraordinary warning by a company seeking to profit from the same ‌technology.

Yawn. There will be hacks and there will be other big problems, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that the risk to humanity is 0%. We are resilient and won’t be wiped out by robots. I’m so burned out on the extreme rhetoric.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful. Of course we should. OpenAI scrapping GPT-6.1 over safety is a good sign.

@manton are you saying that the effect on the job market will be small, or do you see a big unemployment wave as not “catastrophic” enough?

@marv51 I think the effect on jobs will be large — and we are too slow planning for it — but I don’t think that is catastrophic for humanity.

@dfte That video is wild. On the one hand, these people know much more than I do. But I have a pretty good imagination, and I don’t see a path to extinction. There will be problems, though, for sure.

@manton There’s a lot of daylight between extinction and “there will be problems.” In the worst case scenario, I don’t believe the species will die out, but if millions or billions of us die, that’s not extinction – and yet is a deeply, deeply distressing outcome.

@dfte I agree. Millions of deaths would be catastrophic too, and that’s way beyond the level of “problems” I meant.

@manton “This may destroy everything or ruin the world – we’re going to go with it anyway”

@manton hm yes I do see that, personally I see the percentage higher than 0% for sure, if you include a chain of events like unemployment and propaganda leading to fascism and war.

@manton The impact on jobs could be large, but they can also be “maybe we should stop trying to make wild predictions on a highly dynamic labor market all the time…” marginalrevolution.com/marginalr…

As for Anthropic’s self-serving corporate doomerism, my money is on juicing productivity and human longevity rather than infinite paper clips.

@manton Nothing derisks a fundraise like warning investors the product might end civilization. Straight into the S-1. Respect.