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Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
- wonderwonder 23d agoAnd there goes every single rational for having a security team at the disaster bunkers the billionaires are building
- matheusmoreira 23d agohttps://www.apollon-dossier.de/dossier-ix/apocalypse-dos-and-do-nots-2-1 https://www.apollon-dossier.de/dossier-ix/apocalypse-dos-and...
- bpodgursky 23d agoIf civilization collapses, the billionaires are correctly assuming the security team will stop following SEIU strike authorization protocol.
- ceejayoz 23d agoThey are perhaps incorrectly assuming the security team with all the weaponry will remain loyal to them.
- bpodgursky 23d agoSure. Who knows. But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.
- ceejayoz 23d ago> But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Sure. But some of them seize power from others on their way up via force.
- nemomarx 23d agoWould "one of you promises the security team better conditions if they kill a rival" not be how palace coups usually work?
- GolfPopper 23d agoMy recollection from Roman history is that was certainly a part of it, but that 'I command the palace guard, so I should command the empire' also played a large role.
- stymaar 23d ago> historically, strongmen/chieftains have Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.
- sensanaty 22d agoAnd these meek little SV nerds are strongmen?
- john_strinlai 23d agothat's probably dependent on the specific genre of collapse we get to enjoy
- dayvid 23d agoJust pay them well enough. Or pay the people at the top a good amount of money to keep the people below in check and have some hope you can rise to the top for a small portion of the people.
- derwiki 23d agoThey’ll be armed Boston Dynamics robots soon
- toomuchtodo 23d agoBunker busters are not picky, and can be safely delivered from altitude autonomously.
- wrash-qwtr 23d agoThat is why you need The Boring Company to drill your private bunker beneath a granite mountain. No bunker buster is going to reach the middle of a Swiss tunnel.
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- jcranmer 23d agoThey'll thank you for digging your own grave and complete it for you by collapsing the entrance.
- Razengan 23d agoWould be nice if this kind of hate energy was directed at politicians, the military-industrial complex, and faceless oil barons once in a while.
- kridsdale1 23d agoIt has been for 120 years.
- fragmede 23d agoHas it worked?
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- philipallstar 23d agoPresumably they'll have stuff there the security team wants.
- zbentley 23d agoLike security guards' families. Awful, but not without historical precedent.
- philipallstar 23d agoI did almost write that! But if disaster really strikes, then just resources will be useful.
- Tade0 23d agoFear the security guard who has nothing to lose.
- somenameforme 23d agoWhich precedent? Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
- jcranmer 23d agoThere are plenty of people who have been killed by their own bodyguards, e.g., Indira Gandhi.
- somenameforme 22d agoYes, but in those cases - the assassinated generally trusted those who were assassinating them. If you're holding somebody's family hostage or otherwise coercing them, there's no trust and you're gonna get killed. Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
- tracerbulletx 23d agoThere have been plenty of times in history (almost all times) that physically weaker men have secured the loyalty of soldiers with wealth and influence during periods where strong centralized civic authorities did not exist.
- js8 23d agoBut the soldiers didn't have the mobile phones then. This was possible by manipulation the information about reality those soldiers had. For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate. First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit. Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits. This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat. With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other. Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone. (This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)
- applfanboysbgon 23d agoSorry, but I think you've kind of just dug yourself into some concept you think is neat but which doesn't really hold up. Like, this just doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all. First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group. Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
- sailfast 23d agoDon’t think those folks are union…
- malfist 23d agoCongratulations! Your head of security has been elected president of the bunker. For your protection, no further votes will be taken
- ihsw 23d ago[dead]
- doughnutstracks 23d agoAt first I read the title as a possible missile strike on Anthropic's office by a hostile actor.
- coredog64 23d ago[flagged]
- wrash-qwtr 23d ago[flagged]
- jamwil 22d agoHealth insurance in America is—quite uniquely—the deep end of the pool in the whole capitalism v humanity conundrum. I think a lot of Americans feel that viscerally and the widespread support for Luigi was symbolic of how truly fucked up that country is in general.
- ModernMech 23d agoAt this point if news broke Anthropic’s office was bombed my first thought would be the US government. Didn’t they label the company a national security threat?
- staticman2 23d agoThe U.S. government wouldn't need to use bombs they could just send in the police.
- throwa356262 22d agoOr ICE. Half of the employees deported and a few shot dead just for good measures should be enough to bring Dario to the negotiations table.
- actsasbuffoon 22d agoThe president, when asked about bond yields, said that the US military is “the ultimate intervention.” We’re invading spreadsheets now. Anything is possible.
- creatune 23d ago[dead]
- bbor 23d agoThe idea of Anthropic allowing a contractor to squeeze such a tiny cost center at such a massive PR cost right before their IPO is just an objective blunder, IMHO. They should've replied to that email with a quick "No, you will be negotiating with the union tomorrow morning. You maybe eventually saving millions right now could cost us literally billions."
- alephnerd 23d agoIk the building intimately - it's not Anthroptic but the building's security company (which Anthropic does not own and is subleasing). SEIU is working to organize Allied Universal in California. Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.
- forestrywat 23d agoSo you go to the building owner and say, "give them what they want or we walk." Security team probably doesn't want outrageous changes. Building owner probably just being greedy.
- alephnerd 23d agoYou can't in most cases. These buildings are owned by larger conglomerates and are out of scope of landlord-leasee negotiations especially as it's a sublease. Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).
- AnimalMuppet 23d agoSo Anthropic, because they don't own the building, is unable to solve this by throwing money at it? I find that amusing. Except they can. Anthropic could just hire their own security for when the other guys go on strike.
- ReptileMan 23d agoIt is not as if they can't write encouraging prompts to mythos from everywhere.
- dgellow 23d agoImagine a world where 20% of the world compute is allocated to cheerleader-agents encouraging the other agents, and that’s the actual secret recipe to build an AGI
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- geori 23d agoLol at "On secondary markets, investors have propelled the company to a $1.5 billion valuation."
- jasonjmcghee 23d agotypo? or did an editor see the original and say "trillion must be a typo"
- irthomasthomas 23d agoI imagine the logprob of b is much greater than t in this context for most models. So 'trillion' gets corrected to the more likely 'billion'.
- zarzavat 23d agoFreudian slip.
- womitt 23d agoIt's for the second grade htf algos
- mimischi 23d agoMaybe the editor is from Germany DACH, or similar?). A trillion is a billion in that language.
- BoingBoomTschak 22d agoCue the Dr. Evil.
- busyant 22d agoFor my amusement, I recently asked ChatGPT whether OpenAI and Anthropic were worth their proposed valuations or whether they'd be "kneecapped" by the Chinese models etc. It gave me a long, detailed explanation which boiled down to, "Maybe Anthropic will be worth the 1T market cap if xyz happen, but unless something fundamentally changes w/ OpenAI, they are NOT worth anywhere near 1T" Here's a quote from ChatGPT: "And if I had $1 million that had to be invested today in either OpenAI at $852B or Anthropic at $965B, with a 5–7 year lockup: I'd put the entire $1 million into Anthropic. Not 60/40. 100/0 Anthropic."
- bediger4000 23d agoWow, this is bad news. Without in-office collaboration, company culture will collapse. The organic moments of spontaneous synergy won't take place. Perhaps OpenAI or even xAI will take over as leading company. Grim.
- fluxusars 23d ago"Claude, was this sarcasm?" - You're absolutely right!
- ratelimitsteve 22d agoIDK what I would do if I was working and couldn't hear my coworker loudly "spontaneously collaborating" on the phone with the contractor installing his kitchen floor. At least I have an hour commute each way, $25/day in parking costs and another $20/day in food costs to comfort me.
- red-iron-pine 22d ago$20? brah they're in San Fran. 20 covers their coffee.
- ratelimitsteve 22d agowell, coffee seems to be the only thing left that isn't riddled with parasites and broken glass so it works out about even
- chihuahua 22d agoWithout the watercooler conversations, we are nothing. All is lost.
- mandarinclips 23d agoEveryone should boycott Anthropic and stop using Claude. I'm starting with myself.
- Legend2440 23d agoNo thanks.
- kridsdale1 23d agoThat isn’t very load-bearing of you.
- vizzier 23d agoCareful, he might have a blast radius.
- abrenuntio 23d agoBelt and suspenders protection it is.
- stronglikedan 23d agookay then, that was always allowed
- rfgplk 23d agoYou're wasting more of their money by using it. I've personally siphoned probably a few million in electricity costs alone from them while giving them pennies.
- zeafoamrun 23d agoThey should just give engineers PDWs and call it a day.
- red-iron-pine 22d agothis is america. give them AR-15s. you can trust them with AI code, you can trust them with a full-on rifle
- bastard_op 23d agoClaude, I need a strategy for defeating unions trying to up their rates, please research union defeating settlements done in the past 50 years and build a case against them to keep our rates at the lowest possible.
- mawadev 23d agoBold moves and take from a company that values itself at $30T, maybe they should let claude do the security
- jambalaya8 23d agosorta trenchant problem for big AI
- Aboutplants 23d agoOh no, they are going to learn that remote work is just as productive as in person work!
- Valodim 22d agoSpeak for yourself. It certainly isn't for me.
- red-iron-pine 22d ago"anecdotes are not data" bla bla bla
- AuthAuth 22d agoMost of the stats show it being less productive for the company. But in my opinion its more efficient because the company prod takes a slight hit while the workers life productivity also goes up quite significantly.
- bel8 22d agoAs long as you don't force everyone else to do the same, whatever works for you.
- unified101 22d agoBeing an employee is an exercize in force of all kinds (do the work, join the call, do this do that) . By it's very nature, in-office workspace is what people want, not butt in office. Somehow people believe the same force for work location is suddenly too much? RTO is an expression of that. Best workers can do is vote with their employment.
- mococa 23d agoThey are going to work from home? now we will see AGI in next months!
- vintermann 23d agoPretty crazy. The security team denies there ever was a threat of a strike? And generally you do announce strike threats, it's kind of the whole point with strikes that your employer knows of the possibility. Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
- ratelimitsteve 22d agoIt's possible that they just took the state of contract negotiations as an implicit threat of a strike without waiting for the union to explicitly announce the threat.
- red-iron-pine 22d agoI'm assuming something along the lines of: "based upon the intercepted emails and language used in discussions with the union, we predict with 63% accuracy that they will strike within ~3 months"
- ratelimitsteve 21d agojust because AI is really good at being wrong doesn't mean that people aren't themselves capable of being wrong manually. Do I think someone may have consulted AI? Almost certainly, in fact I'd guess that there's an internal policy document somewhere saying that they have to consult AI before making choices like this. Do I think that good old fashioned human incompetence and baseless speculation are at the heart of this? also yes.
- vintermann 22d agoWell isn't that a damn terrible idea? Who convinced them that was a good idea? "We have a heard faint rumors of a whiff that you may one day threaten a strike, so we're gonna try insane overreaction as a tactic"
- ratelimitsteve 22d agoa week of wfh from a company that's equipped to support remote work anyway and only wants in-office 25% of the time hardly qualifies as "insane overreaction". I'd says it's probably more along the lines of "a single email".
- throwa356262 22d ago"The union representing those workers said that was news to them." Smells like IRL hallucination...