alt Hacker NewsI often wonder if the people at anthropic actually believe in the existential risk stuff they talk about. If I was convinced AI could kill everyone, my actions would be almost diametrically opposite to theirs -- I would be committed to ceasing the operation of AI labs at any cost.
It's easy to say they're just lying and it's marketing hype, but I also think it's possible they really believe the best way to stop an evil superintelligent AI is to work on making superintelligent AIs, but just do it smarter than people at OpenAI would. Humans are bizarre creatures!
I don't know about the top people but Anthropic has always been pretty deeply linked with the effective altruism/AI risk/TESCREAL memeplex. IIRC one of OpenAI's people who's pretty prolific on Twitter weighed in a while back to the effect that Anthropic mostly sees themselves as an organization dedicated to serving Claude. Not serving like server but serving like... worship. I find them a little freaky to be honest.