Anthropic raises $13B Series F

Impressive round but it seems unlikely this game can go on much longer before something implodes. Given the amount of cash you need to set of fire to stay relevant it’s becoming nearly impossible for all but a few players to stay competitive, but those players have yet to demonstrate a viable business model.

With all these models converging, the big players aren’t demonstrating a real technical innovation moat. Everyone knows how to build these models now, it just takes a ton of cash to do it.

This whole thing is turning into an expensive race to the bottom. Cool tech, but bad business. A lot of VC folks gonna lose their shirt in this space.

I think we underestimate the insane amount of idle cash the rich have. We know that the top 1% owns something like 80% of all resources, so they don't need that money.

They can afford to burn a good chunk of global wealth so that they can have even more global wealth.

Even at the current rates of insanity, the wealthy have spent a tiny fraction of their wealth on AI.

Bezos could put up this $13 billion himself and remain a top five richest man in the world.

(Remember Elon cost himself $40 billion because of a tweet and still was fine!)

This is a technology that could replace a sizable fraction of humamkind as a labor input.

I'm sure the rich can dig much deeper than this.

"This is a technology that could replace a sizable fraction of humamkind as a labor input."

And if it does? What happens when a sizable fraction of humamkind is hungry and can't find work? It usually doesn't turn out so well for the rich.

Big question is whether it replaces and then doesn't create new opportunity to make up for those casualties. I'm not sold on this, but there's this part of me that actually believes LLM's or perhaps AI more broadly will enable vast numbers of people to do things that were formerly impossible for them to do because the cost was too great, or the thought of doing it too complex. Now those same things are not only accessible, but easy to access. I made a comment earlier today in the thread about Google's antitrust "win" where things I couldn't formerly have done without sizable and costly third-party professional help are now possible for near-zero cost and near-zero time. It really can radically empower folks. Not sure that's going to make up for all the job loss, but there is the possibility of real empowerment.

I'm genuinely curious about how you and other people with similar outlook see this playing out, as it would kind of provide hope.

Scenario: You are a medium level engineer, who got laid off from a company betting on AI to replace a significant portion of their junior/medium level developers. You were also employing a middle-aged woman, to help with the kids after school and around the house, until you and your wife come back from work. She now needed to be let go as well, as you can't afford her anymore. The same thing happened to a large portion of your peers and work in the same industry/profession is practically no longer available. This has ripple effects on your local market (restaurants, caffes, clothing stores etc).

How do you see this as empowering and a net positive thing for these people individually, and for the society? What do they do that replaces their previous income and empowers them to get back to the same level at least?