> There are some perverse incentives here, the more evil stuff these agents do the more capable and impressive it makes them look. Its also a huge publicity event that gets everyone talking about the company when a rogue event happens.
> Anthropic specifically is clearly trying to get the US government to ban open weight models for anticompetitive reasons. So making LLMs seem (or be!) dangerous aligns with their interests very well.
There's a reason that "all publicity is good publicity" is a catchprase in marketing.
And even without banning open weight models, Anthropic and OpenAI are both looking to create a regulatory moat which protects them from competition. Scaring people is a way to get support for that. They don't need the short term revenue - they have lots of funding - they need the long-term protection of their business model.
You might think that's the case, but the reality is more complex.
This subthread touches on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50092468
A couple of quotes:
> There are some perverse incentives here, the more evil stuff these agents do the more capable and impressive it makes them look. Its also a huge publicity event that gets everyone talking about the company when a rogue event happens.
> Anthropic specifically is clearly trying to get the US government to ban open weight models for anticompetitive reasons. So making LLMs seem (or be!) dangerous aligns with their interests very well.
There's a reason that "all publicity is good publicity" is a catchprase in marketing.
And even without banning open weight models, Anthropic and OpenAI are both looking to create a regulatory moat which protects them from competition. Scaring people is a way to get support for that. They don't need the short term revenue - they have lots of funding - they need the long-term protection of their business model.