AI giant Anthropic ‘thinker’ Amanda Askell’s oddball blog posts

AI giant Anthropic ‘thinker’ Amanda Askell’s oddball blog posts

President Trump branded Anthropic “woke” and “radical left” as he banned the AI giant from serving the federal authorities last week – and newly surfaced blog posts from the company’s in-house “philosopher” might present contemporary fodder for critics, The Post has realized.  

In a fiery Truth Social submit on Friday, Trump said Anthropic – a rival to Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI that raised $30 billion last month in a deal valuing the agency at a whopping $380 billion – has been banned from serving any federal company including the Department of War. 

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote.

Amanda Askell is Anthropic’s in-house “philosopher” answerable for Claude’s ethical compass. X/@AmandaAskell

That was after an more and more heated back-and-forth between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and War Secretary Pete Hegseth over Anthropic’s “red lines” that forbid authorities use of its AI instruments for mass surveillance of Americans or to energy weapons able to firing without human oversight.

According to insiders, the squabble over “red lines” highlighted a rising concern about Anthropic within the Trump administration – specifically, that the political beliefs of the company’s top executives skewed left to an alarming diploma.

Amodei himself is a Democratic donor who as soon as called Trump a “feudal warlord” in a now-deleted social media submit expressing assist for Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election. In 2018, he described Trump as a “serious and legitimate threat to the rule of law.”

Those considerations haven’t been helped by lately unearthed blog posts by Amanda Askell, a 37-year-old, Oxford-educated research scientist who joined Anthropic in 2021 after a three-year stint at OpenAI, according to the sources.

“If you were to be told that ritual cannibalism was practiced by your friends, you would presumably say ‘either don’t serve me human flesh for dinner, or I’m not coming to your house,’” Askell wrote in an oddball 2016 submit that likened serving meat to serving human flesh because it promoted vegetarianism.

The earlier yr, Askell had ripped incarceration as a type of punishment, likening it to “flogging.”

“If anything, the suffering imposed by imprisonment seems comparable to the suffering imposed by fairly severe forms of corporal punishment,” she wrote. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is pictured. REUTERS

An Anthropic spokesperson said Askell’s blog posts have been meant as an instructional exercise reasonably than an expression of her private views. The posts have been written before she joined Anthropic and are unrelated to her work at the agency, the spokesperson added.

Askell didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Askell’s posts have been the latest in a slew of data factors that have sparked considerations among US officers about Anthropic’s suitability as a authorities contractor, according to sources.

“Secretary Hegseth is rebuilding the military and removing woke influences, so it’s clear Askell and Anthropic’s ideology is at the heart of this latest showdown,” one Washington-based AI coverage insider told The Post. 

As The Post reported in November, the agency’s ties to Democratic megadonors like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, in addition to the cult-like “Effective Altruism” motion, have been “on the radar” of key determination makers within the Trump administration. Its backers also embody the left-wing Ford Foundation, which has been singled out for criticism by Vice President JD Vance.

Hegseth particularly called out the ideology in a Friday submit on X, writing: “Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they’ve tried to strong-arm the United States army into submission – a cowardly act of company virtue-signaling that locations Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.”

President Trump ordered federal businesses to cease working with Anthropic. through REUTERS

Meanwhile, considerations about Askell have been lately aired by Elon Musk, who has accused Anthropic of manufacturing an AI mannequin that “hates Whites & Asians, especially Chinese, heterosexuals and men.”

Musk claimed that Askell – who led the team answerable for creating an 80-page “soul document” that governs the Claude chatbot’s ethical compass – isn’t certified for the job because “Those without children lack a stake in the future.”

While Askell’s rambling posts regularly delve into heady apolitical philosophy, not less than a number of sign strong progressive leanings.

“Getting rid of the unfairness that we have inherited from the past – such as different levels of investment in education and health across nations and social groups – may require proactive interventions,” Askell wrote in what appeared like a pro-affirmative action submit in 2020. 

“We may even want to make decisions that are less procedurally fair in the short-term if doing so will reduce societal unfairness in long-term,” she added.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth has blasted Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon’s requests. Malcolm Denemark / USA TODAY NETWORK through Imagn Images

Askell was beforehand married to William MacAskill, who’s seen as godfather of Effective Altruism, which was famously promoted by disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.

“Part of what attracted me to the effective altruism movement was the idea that I might be able to help people who are suffering from illnesses abroad,” Askell wrote in a 2017 blog submit. 

Nirit Weiss-Blatt, writer of the “AI Panic” e-newsletter, said Anthropic is going through “backlash” for cultivating “fringe beliefs” and attempting to take them “mainstream.”

“From its inception, Anthropic has marketed itself as ‘only we can tame the AI monster,’” Weiss-Blatt said. “The team’s mindset was shaped by the insular groupthink of the Effective Altruism movement.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company received’t again off its pink strains. REUTERS

White House AI czar David Sacks is certainly one of Anthropic’s most outspoken critics and has accused company brass of desirous to “backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California.”

Following a profile in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Askell posted on X: “A lot of the response has been people trying to infer my personal political views. For what it’s worth, I try to treat my personal political views as a potential source of bias and not as something it would be appropriate to try to train models to adopt.”

Weiss-Blatt argued that Anthropic has projected ethical authority as a mechanism to “pursue regulatory capture, greater centralization, and control.”

“While the company warns of ‘power-seeking AI,’ it has itself become the power-seeking entity,” she added.

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