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Ben Bernanke Joins Anthropic Oversight Trust

49 points

by Jimmc414

2 hours ago

| past

| 11 comments

| anthropic.com

| HN

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visiondude

35 minutes ago

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so the architect of government bailout gets a cushy gig. probably one of the most harmful precedents set and now companies expect bailouts. to bailout the company instead of people and small shareholders was always poor decision, emboldened the worst of the business class. don’t love this hire lol

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esikich

5 minutes ago

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He's 72 years old, I'm sure he has the best brains and everyone's best interests in mind. This is exactly what I want to see. I'm sure he will have very good opinions on technology and it's implications.

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brikym

16 minutes ago

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Just in case Anthropic are looking for some more members that are a good cultural fit I found this list:

> Genie Energy's Strategic advisory board is composed of: Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States),[3] Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild,[4][5] and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.

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rekwah

51 minutes ago

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This feels like Theranos loading up their board with big names.

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fragmede

18 minutes ago

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You can complain that the economics don't work out for you, but Theranos was a fraud, meaning they didn't have a product. Fable is very much a real thing that I can interact with over the Internet.

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jimbob45

12 minutes ago

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Has it ever been proven that the board knew that Theranos was fraudulent? I’m speaking broadly - of course they probably had their own suspicions.

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mountainriver

38 minutes ago

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Except Anthropic has delivered a truly world changing product…

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lostaccount

35 minutes ago

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World changing in a good way?

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msikora

32 minutes ago

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Yes, absolutely in a good way

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ponco

28 minutes ago

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The benefits of modernity (electricity, cars, iPhone, Claude) are good, but they come bundled with potentially terminal ecological costs which is bad.

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doublepg23

17 minutes ago

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Have people (smarter than me) come up with a good equation - or at least heuristic - to determine what inventions are morally good?

I suppose it'd be from a utilitarian perspective?

Ex: My gut feeling is nitrogen fixing would rank "low" on "terminal ecological impact" against "positive benefits to humanity"; the Vinyl resurgence would be around the middle; private jets for the Epstein class would the highest etc.

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CamperBob2

17 minutes ago

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Yup. Best unplug your computer.

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ETH_start

23 minutes ago

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There are certainly ecological costs, but in the long run, Earth's life will only survive if an advanced species like ours is able to transport it off the planet before the sun expands and boils away the ocean and atmosphere, in approximately 800 million years.

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fragmede

15 minutes ago

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Fortunately, the rockets for that will be helped along with the GPU capacity to run rocket simulations on. GPUs not being used to run LLMs can be used instead for physics simulations to help make those rockets work.

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davkan

21 minutes ago

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That remains to be seen.

I for one am doubtful that AI as a whole has meaningfully improved the lives of just about anyone besides the few who have gotten rich. Meanwhile many have already lost their jobs as a result, even if AI is just a convenient scapegoat.

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tayo42

18 minutes ago

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You really think your life is better than 2 years ago because of AI chat bots?

If AI went away tomorrow idk if my life would meaningfully change

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ToValueFunfetti

9 minutes ago

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An AI chatbot diagnosed my rolled shoulders. I had assumed I had bad workout form. I would google "discomfort in upper back" or whatever and it would say "back pain after exercise means take a rest" and I would rest and it wouldn't get better until I lost interest in working out. It never occurred to me that this could be a medical problem, so I never asked a doctor (not that I had one to ask, as I was working retail at the time). Last time I started working out, I went to ChatGPT instead of google and it said "here's your problem, here's how to fix it" and it was right and I continue to work out and my quality of life has risen tremendously. YMMV

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techpression

5 minutes ago

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I would see less fake news, fake profiles and fake content in general. I would be happier, even if I would miss some of it. It’s kind of sad how much we accept the idea of ”trust absolutely nothing” nowadays, even movie trailers for fictional movies are made to drive clicks for ads… obviously there has always been a large trust issue online, but with gen ai we entered a new era of it.

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patcon

30 minutes ago

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So did Los Alamos?

Edit: don't get me wrong, I'm a happy user. But I'd also be a happy consumer of refined sugar in the early 20th century. I'm still not sure if these tools won't destabilize society to the point of collapse. I don't think we understand the complexity of what's going on nearly enough, and am certainly not optimistic about AI being net good for us

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eknkc

45 minutes ago

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Someone here recently said, “Dishonesty is a core value of Anthropic,” and that aligns with my experience of the company as a user. All their talk about AI safety since the company’s inception now feels like pure theater, given their conduct in everyday operations. It’s a shame how quickly their image has deteriorated.

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siren2026

33 minutes ago

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That's actually exactly how I feel about Anthropic.

They play such a PR game, trying really really hard to be seen as the good guys. It feels as another satirical episode of Silicon Valley. It's very clear they are all money and power motivated while also pretending to do all of this for the good of humanity. I have rarely seen that level of hypocrisy and cultish behavior from leadership and employees there.

I would honestly just prefer if they were honest about being power and money hungry instead of playing that game of AI Safety.

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SOLAR_FIELDS

26 minutes ago

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At least Sam Altman appeared to drop all pretenses of his pure sociopathy some time ago

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Avicebron

37 minutes ago

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Dishonesty is at the core of Effective Altruism, which strangles a lot of the sensible choices Anthropic should be making. Although this feels more like, "anyone with socio-political edge worming their way in to suckle on the feed of imaginary printed money" more than anything.

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DesaiAshu

35 minutes ago

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The government response to the ‘08 crisis seems to have worked out better for most big banks (low taxing of negative externalities, growing larger and more profitable), than for regional banks (consolidated) and the bulk of Americans (low median wealth, rising costs of housing/living)

Given the data on this[1], this is a confusing choice of hire to ensure AI gains are distributed equitably

[1] https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-...

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zxcb1

9 minutes ago

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Illuminati

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Jimmc414

2 hours ago

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/former-fe...

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i_idiot

28 minutes ago

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These guys have to produce a hit piece everyday...everyone by now knows that "we are doing this for humanity" is bullshit.

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BrenBarn

46 minutes ago

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Whoop de doo. I'm sure there'll be huge earth-shaking changes in their activities now, right?

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yieldcrv

58 minutes ago

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Is he for loosening or tightening AI safety policy?

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CGMthrowaway

49 minutes ago

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If anything he would be for tightening it, but I suspect his role is less about being a vote one way or the other.

The value he brings is in his data, knowledge & analyses - which he surely has from the Fed - on the scope and extent of AI's potential rrisks in capital sustainability, market stability and wage/job displacement

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Iakeman

32 minutes ago

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That's a funny way of saying connections