No; it’s best if individuals are truthful. But presidents of companies aren’t just individuals, does that mean they should lie? Still no. It just means that they should be limited with who and what they associate with. I mentioned an ” unnecessary news media firestorm”, but the issue is much broader. Anthropic is a private corporation, its fidelity is to its shareholders. “Public Benefit” corporation aside, it is a far different entity than any EA non-profit. I’m not an expert, but I think that history shows that it is almost always a bad idea for private companies to claim allegiance to anything but the most anodyne social goals. It’s bad for the company and bad for the espoused social goals or movement. I’m very much pro-cause neutrality in EA; the idea that a charity might all the sudden realize it’s not effective enough, choose to shut down and divert all resources elsewhere, awesome! Private companies can’t do this. Even a little bit of doing this is antithetical to the incentive structure they face.
No. Just deflect, which admittedly, is difficult to do, but CEOs do it all the time. Ideally she should have been clear about her own personal relationship with EA, but then moved on. Insofar as she was (or seemed) dishonest here, it didn’t help; the wired article is proof of that. It’s hard to pin-point a clear line not to cross, but something like “this is an EA company” would be one, as would “we are guided by the values of the EA movement”.
Sort of. But claiming that you are an EA organization is at least 80% of what makes you one in the eyes of the public, as well as much of self-identification among employees. Ex: There’s a big difference between a company that happens to be full of Mormons and a company that is full of Mormons that calls itself “a Mormon company”.
True. Yeah I’m sketching out a story about the background mechanics here that I think is plausible enough to partly under-cut the premise of this post; but the real bottom line is that this is just a single out-of-context sentence. Mountains out of mole hills.
No; it’s best if individuals are truthful. But presidents of companies aren’t just individuals, does that mean they should lie? Still no. It just means that they should be limited with who and what they associate with. I mentioned an ” unnecessary news media firestorm”, but the issue is much broader. Anthropic is a private corporation, its fidelity is to its shareholders. “Public Benefit” corporation aside, it is a far different entity than any EA non-profit. I’m not an expert, but I think that history shows that it is almost always a bad idea for private companies to claim allegiance to anything but the most anodyne social goals. It’s bad for the company and bad for the espoused social goals or movement. I’m very much pro-cause neutrality in EA; the idea that a charity might all the sudden realize it’s not effective enough, choose to shut down and divert all resources elsewhere, awesome! Private companies can’t do this. Even a little bit of doing this is antithetical to the incentive structure they face.
As for your second response, I agree 100%.
Are you saying if she told the truth it would risk causing a media firestorm? If so, isn’t what you’re saying an endorsement of dishonesty?
If not, then what was the point of what you said originally?
No. Just deflect, which admittedly, is difficult to do, but CEOs do it all the time. Ideally she should have been clear about her own personal relationship with EA, but then moved on. Insofar as she was (or seemed) dishonest here, it didn’t help; the wired article is proof of that.
It’s hard to pin-point a clear line not to cross, but something like “this is an EA company” would be one, as would “we are guided by the values of the EA movement”.
So, you’re advocating not telling the truth but also not lying by avoiding the question.
Sort of. But claiming that you are an EA organization is at least 80% of what makes you one in the eyes of the public, as well as much of self-identification among employees. Ex: There’s a big difference between a company that happens to be full of Mormons and a company that is full of Mormons that calls itself “a Mormon company”.
The Wired article doesn’t say what exactly the question was. I doubt the question was “Is Anthropic an effective altruist company?”.
True. Yeah I’m sketching out a story about the background mechanics here that I think is plausible enough to partly under-cut the premise of this post; but the real bottom line is that this is just a single out-of-context sentence. Mountains out of mole hills.