I spent a couple of days at Anthropic. Here’s some of what I learned. Plus a podcast with Brink Lindsey and a hilarious video about going from sheep to sweater.
The reference to thinking about Dyson spheres makes me think that perhaps the average AI engineer has no experience living the middle class lifestyle that the average American experiences, except as a child. It probably limits what they can imagine as useful applications of the technology to the average adult, and contributes to the popular backlash against AI. For example, I recently transitioned from being a software engineer to a stay at home mom. (Voluntarily, there was still plenty of high paying work for my skillset) When I was a software engineer, the applications of AI seemed endless, from code generation to trace analysis and automatic debugging. But now that I’m a SAHM, it just feels like slightly better search, and doesn’t help with any of the tasks I spend my time doing.
If you’re being asked to host datacenters in your county and put up with slop on social media for slightly better search, I think it’s easy to be a Luddite.
You sound like a real person with a real, not politically crafted POV on data centers. Why doesn't the prospect of money into the tax base outweigh the whatever-they-are costs you expect to experinece of a datacenter?
Thanks for the 'show bible' definition and analogy, which was new to me. This strikes me as like the 'Adobe Culture' paper that founder Chuck Geschke wrote in 1998:
Our daughter in law has been to SF twice this year, once with each grandchild. My husband and I realized we haven't been there for some time, and are noodling a trip. So glad you provided the bamboo utensil info - e i e i oh. And chills to boot!
Thank you for this article. It is interesting but not even a little reassuring to hear their attitude on AI training. But I'll still cash their cheque (I'm part of the $1.5B settlement, they illegally used four of my books in Claude training).
The reference to thinking about Dyson spheres makes me think that perhaps the average AI engineer has no experience living the middle class lifestyle that the average American experiences, except as a child. It probably limits what they can imagine as useful applications of the technology to the average adult, and contributes to the popular backlash against AI. For example, I recently transitioned from being a software engineer to a stay at home mom. (Voluntarily, there was still plenty of high paying work for my skillset) When I was a software engineer, the applications of AI seemed endless, from code generation to trace analysis and automatic debugging. But now that I’m a SAHM, it just feels like slightly better search, and doesn’t help with any of the tasks I spend my time doing.
If you’re being asked to host datacenters in your county and put up with slop on social media for slightly better search, I think it’s easy to be a Luddite.
You sound like a real person with a real, not politically crafted POV on data centers. Why doesn't the prospect of money into the tax base outweigh the whatever-they-are costs you expect to experinece of a datacenter?
The video was very entertaining—thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the 'show bible' definition and analogy, which was new to me. This strikes me as like the 'Adobe Culture' paper that founder Chuck Geschke wrote in 1998:
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/1998-08-Geschke-Adobe-Culture.pdf
I guess it must also have formed part of Claude's corpus...
About the sheep...I wonder if you have heard about the "Sheep-to-Shawl" contest at the Pennsylvania Farm show. Very real, very fast and they auction off the winning garments. https://www.wgal.com/article/winners-announced-for-sheep-to-shawl-contest-at-the-pa-farm-show/70003445
I've seen that done at weaving conventions as well.
Our daughter in law has been to SF twice this year, once with each grandchild. My husband and I realized we haven't been there for some time, and are noodling a trip. So glad you provided the bamboo utensil info - e i e i oh. And chills to boot!
Thank you for this article. It is interesting but not even a little reassuring to hear their attitude on AI training. But I'll still cash their cheque (I'm part of the $1.5B settlement, they illegally used four of my books in Claude training).
I haven't got my check yet. Did it come recently. They used 2 of my books.