I've actually been following this project for a long time and it's none of the above. They're simply testing what a set of frontier models can do when given a goal and left to their own devices.
I agree this outcome is very painful to see and I really feel for Rob. It's clear people (myself included) are completely at breaking point with AI slop.
In this specific case though it's worth spending 30sec to read the website of AI model village to understand the experiment before claiming this was sent by Anthropic or assigning malicious intent.
With who in control? A Russia, China and US alliance? This seems very unlikely to me. All signs indicate we're moving to a multipolar world as far as I can tell.
China owns an increasing majority of global GDP and Trump seems to be either taking a path of peace, populism and or stupidity by pulling America out of its global alliances.
I'm still using the built in MacOS terminal. What am I missing? I mostly do webdev - maybe terminal features are more important for other types of programming?
Amen. I stopped using Reddit when their new website got released a few years back. Not for any ideological reason, just because their new anti-user patterns killed my enjoyment there.