For language learning, I wish there was an audio-first flashcard app that changes up the example sentences every time. Right now, I'm using Anki to learn Japanese vocabulary from N5 to N3[1]. I know the words and the example sentences well enough to read N3-level text, provided I know the grammar. But when it comes to listening, I struggle to understand even N4-level spoken Japanese. Anki just doesn't offer enough variety for me to truly internalize what the sound means in different contexts. Plus, seeing the text before hearing the audio tricks my brain. I think I'm learning the sound, but it's an illusion because I already know the meaning from seeing the word first.
[1] I feel like Anki offers diminishing returns once you get past N3. Advanced words usually have subtle nuances that you can only really pick up through rich context, like in a full paragraph or a TV scene. Native-speaking kids can understand complex words in context because they have a deep grasp of a smaller, simpler vocabulary. That’s why I’m focusing on mastering high-frequency, simple words first to build a learning flywheel. I'm hoping this will eventually let me pick up new words naturally through reading and listening, just like a native kid does.
You're right, there are nuances in different policies. I was referring to the general power and consent that Europeans grant to the EU council. In my naive view their power is unchecked. As a result, we can start with good intent and good regulations, but eventually they will abuse their power as its the nature of power.
Honest question: when Europeans give so much power to EU and usually favor regulations by the government, isn't it natural that the government will try to implement more control? And it looks EU officials do not have to accountable for anything. They will not suffer personally even when their policies wreck havoc. I don't quite understand why Europeans can trust EU at all. Case in point, EU HQs shut down its air conditioning on floors 1 through 7 to prevent electrical overloads, leaving the upper levels used by top officials unaffected. Yet did anyone like Leyen get punished? Note I'm not naive enough to believe politicians don't have special treatment in other countries. But at least in some countries, politicians will not be so shameless that they'd do it in broad day light.
It's great that we have yet another competing models. The more models we have, the less likely we are subject to the ideologies and the controls thereof by the cults like Anthropic. And of course, it drives down the cost of tokens.
Wouldn't toxics like nitrites accumulate over the years? Also, I'd assume the purpose of perpetual soup is to concentrate the aroma and the taste, but is there going to be a diminishing return?
Remember it was reported that OpenAI didn't think that ChatGPT would be successful? OpenAI thought that ChatGPT was yet another toy before its launch. Yet once ChatGPT became an overnight success, Altman started to talk about how AI would be dangerous, how it would displace or even replace jobs. In contrast, Amodei seemed to always believe in what he said. So, can we say that Altman is a opportunistic businessman, and Amodei is a cult leader?
I'm surprised that people still take Gebru seriously. She is a disgrace to the community because she always, I mean literally always, attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white male oppressor (her attacking a Google's SVP). Oh, did I mention that she even said that some loss functions are more racists than others on X?
Gebru is not a researcher. She is a modern-age Trofim Lysenko, who politicizes everything and wields political correctness as a weapon to purge any dissent.
This seems a pretty distinct corporate culture in the US. The companies pamper you in the boom, but dump you in the bust. When times are good, they shower you with perks yet when times are slightly bad, they lay you off like a replaceable line item. This is quite different from Europe or Japan, for instance.
Nice. It's great to see democracy work. Now do the California officials everywhere. Oh wait, my bad. Constituents are happy with Karen Bass and the like. Never mind.
It's wild that Europeans either accept this kind of Soviet-style nonsense, or just feel like they can't do anything about it. Even citizens of the USSR saw right through that blatant, Orwellian 'some animals are more equal' hypocrisy, yet Europeans are somehow just... okay with it? People like Ursula von der Leyen say all the right things while driving the continent into stagnation and crisis, yet they never have to face any personal consequences. It's truly amazing.
I largely blame people like Amodei for such outcome. As product owners, they could've done it the old way: telling people how great this product is, how much potential it has, and what kind of guardrails the companies are building and etc. But oh no, Amodei has to do the doom trolling 24x7, while in the meantime plays a cult leader by telling people only he knows how to the guarding angel of the AI or the humanity thereof. Ironically, the same people also push their companies to develop more powerful AI in full speed. They think ordinary Americans are so stupid that they can't see through them?
> I'm now being paid to go to school, and get raises every year until I'm fully ticketed (way more than I ever made in the entry tech positions).
This. People tend to underestimate the joy that steady progress brings. A quick peak usually just leads to a long, depressing decline. Many people would rather take a career that grows a few percent every year for four decades over one that spikes and crashes any day. It’s better to be a slow grower who stays valuable than a flash-in-the-pan who burns out by 35[1].
[1] Honestly, I think there is a reason for this decline that has nothing to do with AI: the IT industry has just matured. Aside from the classic GoF patterns and Enterprise patterns and their variations, what new popular and deep design patterns have we actually adopted lately? Or look at all those must-know data structures and algorithms that are all over the web. How many of those were invented in the last ten years? Even in open source, where are the new platform-level projects invented in the last 5 years that every major company is pouring resources into? There are not many.
In other words, we are just eating our own tail at this point. It is just CRUD to death. When things get this stagnant, tech departments inevitably turn into cost centers. Even without AI, we were already heading toward a dead end. AI just happens to be the tool that makes it easy to automate everything because, at the end of the day, most of our work is just rearranging the same old code patterns anyway.
> I'd rather see a coding agent that can follow steps in a plan file to a T while following guardrails and adhering to the proper coding conventions in the human reviewed spec.
In fact, I'd rather see Anthropic publish a convincing project that does this using Claude. The project should be complex enough and novel enough to show the world how reliable and powerful Claude is. That is, Anthropic does not need Amodei or its employees to tell us that whatever percent of engineers will lose their jobs. They can just show us. Easily.
There are a few possible explanations of Dario and Anthropic's behavior, if you are not sure if all they want is pump up the valuation like me:
- Anthropic has a cult-like culture. AI Safety is their religion. The AI Constitution is their bible. Dario is their cult leader. Employees are the apostles. They just really really believe their church, and only Dario is qualified to manage the AI safety.
- Asymmetrical risk. If Dario speaks optimistically about AI and he turns out to be wrong, he'd face the rage of many people. If he fans the doomerism of AI and he turns out to be wrong, at most he will be mocked.
- Regulatory capture. After all, pretty much all the AI big shots in Biden government went to Anthropic. They produced the Biden's regulation, and they made it clear that they wanted to pick a few winners to back.
This is hardly surprising. Think about Staff+ engineers: their work is a lot like commanding AI. Most climb the corporate ladder through hard work, excellent engineering skills, soft skills, and a bit of luck. But as their companies grow, they gradually spend less time coding, debugging, or doing deep design.
Instead, they act more like highly technical product managers. They help VPs plan and write high-level product requirements sprinkled with technical terms. They draw boxes on whiteboards and create pretty slides. They write polished documents that keep their leadership happy, and they are either in meetings or on their way to the next one. When they have a technical idea, they dispatch a team to test it out.
Naturally, they still feel deeply technical, until the day they have to resolve a production issue, pass a technical interview, or write extensive code. That is when they realize their skills have grown rusty.
I point this out not to criticize, but to highlight a genuine career challenge. As an engineer, I would rather hone my technical skills. Yet, if you want to climb the corporate ladder, you have to take on more organizational work. The only solution I can think of is to become more like a researcher or a professor. Over the years, good professors spend less time writing papers or deriving formulas. However, their insights are so deep that they still produce amazing results by advising PhD students. But that path is much easier said than done.
When I look at the timeline, it appears that they got exactly what they've been asking for. Or what did I miss?
April: Anthropic announces Claude Mythos. Citing safety concerns regarding the model's capabilities, they restrict access to a small group of testing partners.
May 15: Anthropic executive Chris Olah visits the Vatican to assist the Pope in publishing a 40,000-word manifesto, Magnifica Humanitas. Olah publicly states the model exhibits over 100 distinct emotional traits.
The pre-release: Anthropic briefly calls for a global halt to AI research.
The release: Anthropic launches Claude Fable 5, a consumer-facing version built on the Mythos architecture but with strict safety guardrails.
The post-release throttling: Users discover Fable 5's performance is being silently degraded on specific tasks. Anthropic acknowledges the throttling, citing the need to prevent foreign competitors from extracting synthetic training data. They promise future limitations will be transparent. Performance is notably restricted on biology and chemistry prompts.
The essay: CEO Dario publishes an essay advocating for strict government oversight. He proposes heavy regulation for any AI company exceeding $500 million in AI revenue or $1 billion in R&D spending.
The regulation: Two days later, the US government places export controls on both Mythos and Fable 5, classifying them alongside high-end semiconductor equipment. This immediately blocks Anthropic's own non-US employees from accessing the models.
The fallout: Amodei calls the export controls a "misunderstanding" that disrupts their global internal operations. Anthropic subsequently issues a statement noting that known jailbreaks for Fable 5 are also effective on OpenAI's GPT-5.5, highlighting the lack of equivalent regulatory action against their competitor.
Me neither. I just want a business to get my stuff done in a standard way. Clear pricing upfront and no haggling. No surprise. If I hire someone to take care my yard, then take care of the yard. The price is reasonable. The plants thrive. The lawn is green. The irrigation system just works and does not leak. Connection, what connection?
[1] I feel like Anki offers diminishing returns once you get past N3. Advanced words usually have subtle nuances that you can only really pick up through rich context, like in a full paragraph or a TV scene. Native-speaking kids can understand complex words in context because they have a deep grasp of a smaller, simpler vocabulary. That’s why I’m focusing on mastering high-frequency, simple words first to build a learning flywheel. I'm hoping this will eventually let me pick up new words naturally through reading and listening, just like a native kid does.