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Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

(djnn.sh)
1160 points vxvxvx | 13 comments | 16 Nov 25 11:32 UTC | HN request time: 1.016s | source | bottom

Earlier thread: Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918638 - Nov 2025 (281 comments)
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KaiserPro ◴[16 Nov 25 12:33 UTC] No.45944641[source]▶
When I worked at a FAANG with a "world leading" AI lab (now run by a teenage data labeller) as an SRE/sysadmin I was asked to use a modified version of a foundation model which was steered towards infosec stuff.

We were asked to try and persuade it to help us hack into a mock printer/dodgy linux box.

It helped a little, but it wasn't all that helpful.

but in terms of coordination, I can't see how it would be useful.

the same for claude, you're API is tied to a bankaccount, and vibe coding a command and control system on a very public system seems like a bad choice.

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jgalt212 ◴[16 Nov 25 13:42 UTC] No.45945088[source]▶
> now run by a teenage data labeller

sick burn

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y-curious ◴[16 Nov 25 14:42 UTC] No.45945472[source]▶
I don’t know anything about him, but if he is running a department at Meta, he as at the very least a political genius and a teenage data labeller
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1. tim333 ◴[16 Nov 25 23:16 UTC] No.45949334[source]▶
I was just watching the Y Combinator interview with Alexandr Wang who I guess may be being referred to https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U

The teenage data labeler thing was a bit of an exaggeration. He did found scale.ai at nineteen which does data labeling amongst other things.

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2. ulfw ◴[17 Nov 25 01:22 UTC] No.45950072[source]▶
What other things?
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3. rhines ◴[17 Nov 25 02:24 UTC] No.45950343[source]▶
I watched this interview when I first heard about Alexandr Wang. I'd seen he was the youngest self made billionaire, which is a pretty impressive credential to have under your belt, and I wanted to see if I could get a read on what sets him apart.

Unfortunately he doesn't reveal any particular intelligence, insight, or drive in the interview, nor does he in other videos I found. Possibly he hides it, or possibly his genius is beyond me. Or possibly he had good timing on starting a data labelling company and then leveraged his connections in SV (including being roommates with Sam Altman) to massively inflate Scale AI's valuation and snag a Meta acquisition.

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4. objektif ◴[17 Nov 25 05:37 UTC] No.45951085[source]▶
Semantic tagging.
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5. ◴[17 Nov 25 06:35 UTC] No.45951300[source]▶
6. tim333 ◴[17 Nov 25 07:59 UTC] No.45951671[source]▶
I got the impression he's intelligent and hard working but to a large extent got lucky. I mean his idea was to kind of do a better version of Mechanical Turk which is ok as an idea but not amazing or anything. But then all these LLM companies were getting billions thrown at them by investors thinking they'd be AGI soon but they didn't work well without lots of humans doing fine tuning and Wang's company provided an outlet to throw the money at to get humans to try to do that.

I don't know how that will go at Meta. At the moment having lots of humans tweek LLMs still seems to be the main thing at the AI companies but that could change.

7. ulfw ◴[17 Nov 25 08:15 UTC] No.45951745{3}[source]▶
So... Tagging and labeling ok.
8. tim333 ◴[17 Nov 25 11:03 UTC] No.45952536[source]▶
They do testing like 'humanities last exam' and they build custom LLMs for some of the largest companies, the defense dept and other US govt stuff - bit here https://youtu.be/5noIKN8t69U?t=2037
9. id ◴[17 Nov 25 11:52 UTC] No.45952818[source]▶
Or maybe, just maybe, becoming a billionaire has way more to do with luck than anything else.

I don't know about any billionaire in the history of billionaires who appears to have gotten there solely based on special abilities. Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes.

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10. tim333 ◴[17 Nov 25 12:59 UTC] No.45953187{3}[source]▶
Oprah Winfrey? Still some luck but she didn't start in great circustances.
11. never_giveup ◴[17 Nov 25 14:19 UTC] No.45953765{3}[source]▶
Surely
12. ◴[17 Nov 25 16:13 UTC] No.45954930[source]▶
13. jandrese ◴[17 Nov 25 18:14 UTC] No.45956248{3}[source]▶
> Being born into the right circumstances is all it really takes.

You do still need to do the work. People have squandered golden opportunities because they didn't put in the effort.