YHK - yet another hacker news clone

One resignation turned the embers of AI fear into a wildfire

28 points pretext 1 hour ago 32 comments

codeddesign 40 minutes ago | parent

Fake psyop slop. Guy worked there for 6 weeks, almost no X followers when he posted his “I quit” thread, WSJ then posted their story around this post 18 mins later.

tiborsaas 34 minutes ago | parent

Which makes you question if this was the plan all along or he was totally naive not to think this though. Imagine if he did this with Aylo (formerly known as MindGeek) :)

warkdarrior 32 minutes ago | parent

Jacob Coxon was at Anthropic since 2024, so more than 6 weeks.

bronco21016 31 minutes ago | parent

I'm pretty skeptical as well. As soon as I saw his interview on NBC News last night I texted a friend that this guy is about to get a $500 million seed round for an AI alignment startup.

The entire interview he's just grinning like he has the "answer" to all these companies he alleges don't take safety seriously.

dgellow 17 minutes ago | parent

> The entire interview he's just grinning like he has the "answer" to all these companies he alleges don't take safety seriously.

Can also be attributed to stress, nervousness no?

dgellow 21 minutes ago | parent

What is your source for 6 weeks? I see since 2024

qurren 40 minutes ago | parent

I'm an AI engineer, I feel similarly.

I also feel a need to amass retirement levels of wealth right ASAP before this all comes crashing down, and then move to somewhere else away from this mess.

The only good way for me to do that is to keep working in AI, because nothing else that I have skills for pays that high.

mrhottakes 30 minutes ago | parent

Pathetic lack of self-respect.

montagg 27 minutes ago | parent

Don’t hate the player.

I have mad respect for people who can actually throw away a shit ton of financial security for themselves and their families for something they believe in. It’s rare for a reason. Everyone has a price.

If you can get financial security without selling your soul, fewer people would do that, across every industry where selling your soul for security is possible.

GPerson 5 minutes ago | parent

I feel people who sell their souls to be in finance or work as corporate attorneys for bad companies deserve criticism, but people who sell their souls to work for an enterprise they themselves believe is at the very least going to destroy civilization absolutely are pathetic and evil.

jimbokun 17 minutes ago | parent

What would you do in their situation?

atleastoptimal 6 minutes ago | parent

Yeah. Let's say they regulate AI to oblivion to avoid dangers, perhaps crashing the economy in the short-term but assuring that no major catastrophe occurs.

All those who worked in AI still have the money they cashed out on, there might not be another opportunity to obtain generational wealth in such a short time again.

comrade1234 33 minutes ago | parent

Why is all this drama coming only from the American companies?

comeonbro 25 minutes ago | parent

Every company that is not OpenAI or Anthropic is sufficiently behind the frontier to feel ethically shielded from the weight of advancing the frontier.

It is certainly possible that Chinese companies might do less handwringing about it, but until they're advancing the frontier they're not being tested.

convolvatron 22 minutes ago | parent

wow. that's really quite backwards. the more money you raise and the more money you want, the bigger the story you have to tell. apparently after 1T you've got to raise the stakes to extinction level event.

comeonbro 18 minutes ago | parent

"it's just marketing" cool story bro

dgellow 25 minutes ago | parent

Capital concentration, they have access and lots of control over the media, their CEOs made themselves public personalities, they for some reasons decided to cosplay as Bond villains, they are linked to Trump (and lot of people hate Trump). Just a few reasons, I’m sure we can think of more

bpodgursky 20 minutes ago | parent

America is a stage for the world. Nobody knows or cares about drama happening in European tech companies.

I say this neither negatively or positively, it's just that US news is, for now, the only international news, in both tech and politics.

jimbokun 18 minutes ago | parent

Because they have the most advanced models.

orbital-decay 9 minutes ago | parent

It's mostly coming from two out of many American companies that happen to have the highest concentration of people from a very specific movement born in California long before the current AI wave. In fact Anthropic's entire internal culture was built around their views. The fact they operate massive amounts of money doesn't help.

ASalazarMX 2 minutes ago | parent

> from a very specific movement born in California long before the current AI wave

Can you be more specific? This is new to me, but I'm not familiar with Californian history.

ar_lan 5 minutes ago | parent

Because Anthropic and OpenAI are the primary drivers of the AI space?

recursive 32 minutes ago | parent

What is "RSI"? This is the first I'm hearing of this alleged wildfire.

NyxWulf 30 minutes ago | parent

Recursive Self Improvement

adrianpike 30 minutes ago | parent

Recursive Self Improvement

fuzzfactor 28 minutes ago | parent

ad infinitum, nothing to do with "anybody's" HN username ;)

joshstrange 25 minutes ago | parent

Crazy that it's not defined anywhere in this post while also being an existing thing (Repetitive stress injury).

prologic 22 minutes ago | parent

Clearly: Repetitive Strain Injury :D

Something we all suffer from in this industry !

cynicalsecurity 23 minutes ago | parent

It did not.

mcast 19 minutes ago | parent

It seems deeply suspicious that a company benefitting from regulatory capture would artificially stoke fears of AI and propaganda about it.

pessimizer 11 minutes ago | parent

One resignation distracted from the constant failures of AI in order to boost its value yet again, and to advocate for a particular AI company as saintly.

I have yet to see a positive improvement in the world that could be blamed on AI. Why don't they fix the DMVs of the world? The answer is that they would if they could, it would be great PR, but they can't. They can't even operate a phone for the corner drugstore.

I'm bullish on LLMs and they're defeating any optimism I have daily. I should see every program on my computer improving, but they're getting worse. I should see every website getting cleaner while heavy, crappy frameworks put in for developer convenience are being removed and being replaced with feather-light, minimal code and new designs that anticipate my needs. Nope, even getting worse. This is coding, where they're best.

Can somebody tell me anything that AI has improved in my life? The costs are obvious and massive. Just one improvement to hold onto my optimism.

int32_64 2 minutes ago | parent

The best way to stifle AI growth would be to deprive the labs of capital, and yet these AI safetyists never seem to seriously attack the money side.

It gives away the game entirely, they want regulatory capture and the politicians boosting it want millions in donations from the IPOs, there's big money in this type of AI grifting.

The SEC should heed the AI labs own warnings and forbid any AI lab doing doom marketing from doing an IPO, for safety of course.