There are like 4 reasons why I think this logic doesn’t check out:
Now there are a lot of investors interested, but early investors are much more counterfactual and make a substantial difference
Most of Anthropic’s early talent worked there because it seemed to be endorsed by safety people, and so that endorsement is the basis of a very large fraction of Anthropic’s valuation, and marginally more investment from safety people would have caused more of this
I don’t think you could have just publicly stated that Anthropic was bad for the world and then invest anyways. My sense from these kinds of dynamics is indeed that saying bad things about an organization as an investor does just cause you to be excluded at the very least in future funding rounds, and you are generally asked implicitly to not say anything bad about the organization.
Being an investor in a leading lab like this is a huge moral hazard to yourself. Saying bad things about the organization or lobbying for regulation that would hurt Anthropic’s valuation now comes at huge financial damage to yourself, and you are also exposing yourself to a social context where people will target you specifically with large amounts of pressure and attempts at manipulating you into being on Anthropic’s side.
I don’t think it’s impossible to work these out, and think there is at least one case of an investor in Anthropic and other capability companies where I think it is plausible they made the right choice in doing so, but the vast majority of people didn’t do anything to counteract the issues above and did indeed just end up causing harm this way.
There are like 4 reasons why I think this logic doesn’t check out:
Now there are a lot of investors interested, but early investors are much more counterfactual and make a substantial difference
Most of Anthropic’s early talent worked there because it seemed to be endorsed by safety people, and so that endorsement is the basis of a very large fraction of Anthropic’s valuation, and marginally more investment from safety people would have caused more of this
I don’t think you could have just publicly stated that Anthropic was bad for the world and then invest anyways. My sense from these kinds of dynamics is indeed that saying bad things about an organization as an investor does just cause you to be excluded at the very least in future funding rounds, and you are generally asked implicitly to not say anything bad about the organization.
Being an investor in a leading lab like this is a huge moral hazard to yourself. Saying bad things about the organization or lobbying for regulation that would hurt Anthropic’s valuation now comes at huge financial damage to yourself, and you are also exposing yourself to a social context where people will target you specifically with large amounts of pressure and attempts at manipulating you into being on Anthropic’s side.
I don’t think it’s impossible to work these out, and think there is at least one case of an investor in Anthropic and other capability companies where I think it is plausible they made the right choice in doing so, but the vast majority of people didn’t do anything to counteract the issues above and did indeed just end up causing harm this way.