Charlie G 🔹 comments on Charlie G’s Quick takes

[Charlie G 🔹]

I agree that the timing is to some extent a coincidence, especially considering that the TIME piece followed an Anthropic board appointment which would have to have been months in the making, but I’m also fairly confident that your piece shaped at least part of the TIME article. As far as I can tell, you were the first person to bring up the concern that large shareholders, in particular potentially Amazon and Google, could end up overruling the LTBT and annulling it. The TIME piece quite directly addressed that concern, saying,

The Amazon and Google question

According to Anthropic’s incorporation documents, there is a caveat to the agreement governing the Long Term Benefit Trust. If a supermajority of shareholders votes to do so, they can rewrite the rules that govern the LTBT without the consent of its five members. This mechanism was designed as a “failsafe” to account for the possibility of the structure being flawed in unexpected ways, Anthropic says. But it also raises the specter that Google and Amazon could force a change to Anthropic’s corporate governance.

But according to Israel, this would be impossible. Amazon and Google, he says, do not own voting shares in Anthropic, meaning they cannot elect board members and their votes would not be counted in any supermajority required to rewrite the rules governing the LTBT. (Holders of Anthropic’s Series B stock, much of which was initially bought by the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, also do not have voting rights, Israel says.)

To me, it would be surprising if this section was added without your post in mind. Again, your post is the only time prior to the publication of this article (AFAICT) that this concern was raised.