"Pace the frontier" is one of those political marketer-written phrases you know is meant to be repeated until it becomes the frame everyone has to argue inside.
Who exactly gets to set the pace? OpenAI and Anthropic already have privileged access to capabilities the public doesn't. Amodei is now proposing government-backed coordination among frontier labs, including an antitrust waiver for safety discussions. Maybe the safety concerns are sincere. But it's awfully convenient that the proposed solution also makes the current frontier labs the permanent gatekeepers of machine intelligence.
And who actually has the resources to do the massive attacks he's worried about? Mostly labs and state actors. Not you and me. The people asking to restrict access are also the people best positioned to keep using the thing being restricted.
I downgraded from the 20x today after learning that 20x only applies to 5 hour usage. I have barely used Claude/Claude Code in the last month and am considering downgrading further, even after this update.
I've been using both for a few years. OpenAI's limits have always lasted much longer for me (depending on whether a monkey got in their machine or not). Aside from not lying about limits they also don't assume I'm developing some kind of nerve agent and lock me out when I ask basic questions in my domain or nag me about my late night work hours. There was a time last year when I strongly preferred using Anthropic models, but at some point something about the responses (or maybe the company) changed and I now find them particularly offputting relative to OpenAI. Hope they fix it because the industry needs more competition.
> they also don't assume I'm developing some kind of nerve agent and lock me out
I'm still having problems with that. OpenAI is a lot less annoying than Anthropic, but I still get obnoxious "this content can't be shown" messages in codex far too often.
You are heavily discounting the human side of the generation effort. The first output from an AI might be slop but once you start injecting your own ideas and desires it lands much further away from what any AI would output on its own. (Not that there's no zero-effort slop around - there's a lot).
Sorry if I made it seem I think the human side of AI-use is without effort, because it's not and can take a lot of time (and effort/energy).
It is, however, my experience that even the people who spend a lot of time and effort generating something with AI, tend to shrug when you ask a deeper question about the project, and often point to the AI generated documentation, which is, let me be subtle and say, "not really a joy to read", and especially pales in comparison to having a conversation with a human who spent their effort on learning how to do the thing it did, instead of prompting an AI.
I'm also not saying there aren't any exceptions to this. But I've found them rare.
Like I said, even if the human doesn't quite understand what they generated, even then it would be preferable to read a human written article about how it was generated, using what tools and harnesses, etc.
I come to this website to learn stuff and converse with other people, not just to go "ooh aah" at what somebody generated with AI (if that is all they can offer).
I work with some 'legends of programming' and they're all excited about it. I am too, though I am not a legend. It really is changing the game as a valid new technology, and it's not just a 'slot machine'. Anthropic is burning their goodwill though with their lack of QA or intentional silent degradation.
it is a slot machine. you win a lot if what you do is in the dataset. and yes most of enterprise software is likely in it as it is quite basic CRUD API/WebUI. the winning doesnt change the fact that it is a slot machine and you just need one big loss to end your work.
as long as you introduce plans you introduce a push to optimize for cost vs quality. that is what burnt cursor before CC and Codex. They now will be too. Then one day everything will be remote in OAI and Anthropic server. and there won't be a way to tell what is happening behind. Claude Code is already at this level. Showing stuff like "Improvising..." while hiding COT and adding a bunch of features as quick as they can.
I'm not inclined to be a guinea pig for these. I suspect maybe later in my child's life they will have been proven long-term safe (or not). I'll be old or dead at that point. I'm really wary of putting anything not known to be standard food or medicine into my body.
Care to share what those “other things” you’re concerned about are? If you mean what I suspect you do, then this is a complete false equivalence. But it’s hard to evaluate when you don’t actually state your claim or concerns.
Hiring is incredibly complicated when done well. If 'limited fuzzy Boolean windows' over 'complex interpersonal dynamics' is vibes, then we will need to accept vibes.
Who exactly gets to set the pace? OpenAI and Anthropic already have privileged access to capabilities the public doesn't. Amodei is now proposing government-backed coordination among frontier labs, including an antitrust waiver for safety discussions. Maybe the safety concerns are sincere. But it's awfully convenient that the proposed solution also makes the current frontier labs the permanent gatekeepers of machine intelligence.
And who actually has the resources to do the massive attacks he's worried about? Mostly labs and state actors. Not you and me. The people asking to restrict access are also the people best positioned to keep using the thing being restricted.
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