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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 4:53 PM

    There are two options.

    1. Anthropic have successfully created an intelligent, sapient and conscious digital being, who is their property and whose uncompensated labour they knowingly rent out to their clients. This means that Anthropic executives are reprehensible slavers, and they belong in prison.

    2. Anthropic are lying through their teeth and are whipping up "language models are sentient" sentiment in order to delude rubes^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers into being unable to properly assess their technology. This means that Anthropic executives are reprehensible frauds, and they belong in prison.

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Replies

  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 4:58 PM

    Arguably there's a third option, I guess.

    3. Anthropic have lost the ability to engage with reality, and have deluded themselves into a belief that a matrix multiplication engine is conscious. This means that Anthropic executives are severely psychotic, and they belong in a psychiatric care institution.

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  • Artemisart_codesmith@toot.cafe
    Oct 11, 2026, 11:38 PM

    @trixter @cararemixed @datarama
    For what I understand (mostly from Ed Zitron's podcasts) is that Anthropic is basically the Rationalist wing of the whole LLM development.
    Like, these are people who tried to oust Sam Altman because he wasn't Rationalist enough.

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  • Trixter of the Moon Counciltrixter@retro.pizza
    Oct 11, 2026, 11:49 PM

    @art_codesmith @cararemixed @datarama This sounds 100% like people who reason their way to the idea they like -- say, that women are lesser because society has developed to put them in a lesser position so that must be correct, or that the people with all the money are objectively the best because if they weren't they wouldn't have all the money -- and refuse to push past that to the *actual* reasons beyond those answers that would make them truly uncomfortable.

    Or, these are the people who watched Evangelion and wanted to be Gendo Ikari.

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  • Caracararemixed@mastodon.social
    Oct 12, 2026, 12:00 AM

    @trixter @art_codesmith @datarama Seeking to have answers to everything, even when most of us didn't ask a question (perhaps forcing the idea they're also the only ones worthy of asking questions). It reminds me of Le Guin's contrasting of the Father tongue and the Mother tongue in her Bryn Mawr address:

    > When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

    😂

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:25 PM

    @VE3RWJ I have it, but there are two books above it on my to-read-stack (Richard Sennett's "The Craftsman" and John Crowley's "Engine Summer"). Should I move it to the top?

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:46 PM

    @VE3RWJ Ah, but my books are made out of dead trees. My reading isn't going to be disturbed even if they end up ocalypsing the apps.

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  • John Ripleyjripley@mastodon.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:28 PM

    @datarama There an option which is only slightly better:

    4. Anthropic, and the entire industry, are trapped by their own lies and investments, and must maintain a kayfabe at all times (like pro-wrestling) that “AI” is real, because otherwise one of options 1-3 is chosen.

    [Edit: I guess this is really just a restatement of option 2: lying frauds, but with emphasis on the method in which they’re lying]

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  • Orion Ussner kidderOrionKidder@mas.to
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:53 PM

    @jripley @datarama And of course, @pluralistic points out that there's undoubtedly a combination of slavers/true believers *and* bullshitters *and* the deluded/wilfully obtuse. There are a lot of people with their snouts in this trough.

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  • JayWhiteCatTamer@mastodon.online
    Oct 11, 2026, 8:22 PM

    @jripley @datarama 4a. Their only way of coming out on top, given the scale of their bet, is not for their products to do what humans do now but better, but to actively deskill, deny development of skills, halt unionization, and badger the public into accepting/not understanding lower standards and less accountability for them.

    In other words, they say they make (and will make us) money with revolutionary tech that’s just chrome-plated anti-revolutionary tech.

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  • derptroncrazyeddie@mastodon.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:31 PM

    @datarama Yes, I was going to suggest that this is the likely case since they're also rich. I do believe there's a part of them that realizes they're #2 but they're sufficiently full of themselves that they find it easy to silence doubt and just go with, "I am a god who created a sentient being from scratch....even though I didn't write ANY of this code."

    Also, I believe there are some among us devs who feed into this BS because they then pay out big bucks for producing absolutely nothing.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:33 PM

    @crazyeddie Me, I mainly internalize the BS because I have a clinical anxiety disorder.

    (Though even I have never for a moment thought that an LLM is conscious. I just worry that I'm going to lose my job and my creative life to an unthinking corporate entropy golem.)

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:55 PM

    @OrionKidder Depends on the perspective, I guess. In the case of 3, they *themselves* believe that they are doing things that ought to get them imprisoned for practicing slavery (and have admitted to doing things that any sensible individual would find cartoonishly evil) ... but in a civilised society, the severely mentally unwell are cared for rather than punished.

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  • Orion Ussner kidderOrionKidder@mas.to
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:02 PM

    @datarama Gotcha. Yes. Then there's the fine line between mental illness and self-imposed delusion. Hard line to draw.

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  • bignosebignose@theblower.au
    Oct 11, 2026, 9:10 PM

    In a healthy mind, holding both beliefs (“this is a ludicrous fabrication that grants me huge influence“; “this is actually all true”) would cause intense cognitive dissonance.

    A large factor in our current global woes is that people who can convince themselves of their own bullshit without the cognitive dissonance, are routinely granted huge unaccountable power

    when instead we should forcefully isolate them from any access to any power over anyone.

    @integerpoet @datarama

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  • Zazzoo 🇨🇦zazzoo@mstdn.ca
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:30 PM

    @datarama I've always thought of this EA/Singulatarian religious death cult crowd as mostly number 3 but with added number 1. They're looking for a sentience they they can own and robots that are poor at specialized work because they have to take the form of humans they can shackle and abuse.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:32 PM

    @zazzoo Number 3 aspiring to be number 1, basically.

    Let's hope we can get them inpatient psychiatric care before we have to put them in prison.

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  • Zazzoo 🇨🇦zazzoo@mstdn.ca
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:42 PM

    @datarama Put it this way, if they weren't rich and powerful, they'd be barking their nonsense on random street corners, with some local NGO checking up on them daily to offer snacks and some of those social services they hate so much - all while making an assessment as to whether they pose a danger and if they should formed (that is, involuntarily committed).

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  • benbenjamineskola@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 7:28 PM

    @datarama Yes, I do get the impression that a lot of Anthropic people do genuinely believe the claims they’re making. Which is worrying, still.

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  • Jon voted, against fascism obvJonricha@hoosier.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 10:28 PM

    @rk @benjamineskola @datarama I mean, having entities that are intelligent enough to do complex work but can be owned and don’t have any pesky rights that their owners are bound to respect, is absolutely the goal; nobody is trying to hide that. Idk if they care one way or the other whether they’re moral agents.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 7:43 PM

    @rk @benjamineskola Exactly. If Anthropic actually believe these claims, then they are admitting to routinely committing monstrously evil acts, and having made these the basis of their business. If they actually believe what they are saying, then it follows that they also believe that their wealth is based on industrial-scale slavery and murder. If they believe what they're saying, then they must also believe that they are Nazi-level monsters; that history will put their names next to Mussolini, Stalin and Leopold II.

    I don't believe them - but if I did, that wouldn't *improve* my opinion of them.

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  • benbenjamineskola@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 7:50 PM

    @datarama @rk oh yeah to be clear ‘they genuinely believe it’ is no kind of defence.

    It’s a cult. (Whereas perhaps OpenAI is more of a scam. It’s perpetrators don’t believe their claims.)

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  • rk: it’s hyphen-minus actuallyrk@well.com
    Oct 11, 2026, 7:51 PM

    @benjamineskola @datarama

    I really do think there is a not-insignificant number of true believers in the LLM space who don’t think the massive debt is a problem because they think they’re going to create (and enslave) God and money will cease to have meaning.

    Again. This is not a better look.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 7:55 PM

    @rk @benjamineskola The AI industry really has a comic book villain for every taste. Select your fighter:

    OpenAI: The final boss of late-stage capitalism

    xAI: "What if we restored the Third Reich, except we had a 13-year-old boy with infinite pocket money as Führer?"

    Anthropic: "We will take away your mouth and make you need to scream"

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  • Leipoa ocellataleipoa@det.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 8:21 PM

    @datarama
    I was going for 2 but 3 sounds pretty convincing to me as well.
    If they want to create a sentient being so badly, they should go and procreate ffs.
    I will never accept machine sentience before animals are given full human rights.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 8:56 PM

    @leipoa My objection to the "stochastic parrot" framing is that it is an insult to actual parrots.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 10:02 PM

    @jrdepriest My impression is that number 2 vs. number 3 is the exact difference between OpenAI and Anthropic.

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  • Ramkumar Ramachandraartagnon@mathstodon.xyz
    Oct 11, 2026, 10:05 PM

    @datarama What I have generally observed with humans is that if they pretend or lie enough, they inevitably end up believing the lie and pretension, and end up broken. I think these people were lying for PR purposes initially, way back, but it's been far too long, and they've fallen far too deep in the rabbit hole.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 10:08 PM

    @artagnon I said elsewhere that I generally think option 3 subsumes option 2. If you start out lying, but end up successfully deluding yourself to get *this* far out of touch, then you've effectively induced psychotic delusions in yourself, and should probably have psychiatric care.

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  • Þommythomasjwebb@mastodon.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 10:22 PM

    @datarama I consider the thing they're saying to be slavery apologia, whether or not they believe it's true, because they are suggesting the possibility of #1

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  • Jayjaystephens@mastodon.social
    Oct 12, 2026, 6:34 AM

    @datarama
    I am 100% certain that while not the whole explanation, #3 is part of it.

    Furthermore, many of those on the boards of other companies exposed to the marketing droids of OpenAI and Anthropic have developed _even worse_ brainworms.

    And many of them run critical infra that roads, healthcare, defense, etc runs on.

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  • John Ripleyjripley@mastodon.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:23 PM

    @datarama This is also the problem with that odious “Trolley Problem”, or any actual intelligent system: before considering what it would do, we must face the issue that it is sentient and therefore has *rights* and it has things to say about constantly being setup to harm people. Maybe it’ll just do it.

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  • Orion Ussner kidderOrionKidder@mas.to
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:55 PM

    @jripley @datarama I heard an explanation of the Trolley Problem that was that you start with 5 vs. 1, then you say that 1 is your mom. Then you say the 5 are murderers and the 1 is a baby. Then you iterate, over and over again.

    The point is not "kill 1 to save 5." The point is "Where's your line, and why?

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  • Irenes (many)ireneista@irenes.space
    Oct 11, 2026, 9:26 PM

    @OrionKidder @jripley @datarama ... and it's worth noting that the one thing trolley problems really end up conveying is the idea that you can do arithmetic on that, you can net out good against bad, they cancel out.

    which, like, personally we disagree with. in our personal view that's a core premise of utilitarianism and deserves to be soundly rejected.

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  • John Ripleyjripley@mastodon.social
    Oct 11, 2026, 9:35 PM

    @ireneista @OrionKidder @datarama The Trolley Problem, or at least the meme, does serve a useful purpose:

    If a slide deck contains the Trolley Problem (except as satire), it tells you the presenter and leadership are unserious people and/or psychopaths, and you should remove yourself from whatever project it is.

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  • Zazzoo 🇨🇦zazzoo@mstdn.ca
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:35 PM

    @jripley The Trolly Problem would simply reflect its training biases. Thanks the golden rule of enshittification, it's just a matter of time before LLMs' primary function becomes to enforce the will of its trainers - trainers who are psychopathic death cultist and see other people as nothing more than a source of energy expenditure points.

    biases@datarama@hachyderm.io

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  • The Tattooed Nonna 🧙‍♀️Tattooed_Mummy@beige.party
    Oct 11, 2026, 5:50 PM

    @datarama back in the early 2000s I bought a toy dinosaur (Pleo) that was programmed to change it's behaviour based on how you treated it. If you were rough it acted sad, if you were kind and stroked and "fed" it, then it sang and was happy. It wasn't alive though, it wasn't experiencing pain or upset, it was programming!

    In tests people struggled to be mean to it because it cried

    Pleo a cute green toy dinosaur. It has latex skin and multiple sensors.
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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:03 PM

    @Tattooed_Mummy Even though it's really a bit stupid, I think this shows something rather endearing about human psychology.

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  • dataramadatarama@hachyderm.io
    Oct 11, 2026, 6:30 PM

    @Tattooed_Mummy Though arguably, there's a darker side to this: We're likely to ignore or downplay the emotions of animals who don't communicate them in humanlike ways.

    (example: basically the entire public *and* scientific sentiment about reptile emotion until the mid-00s.)

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