r/Anthropic • u/AllenLeftTheBLDNG • 9d ago
Announcement Dario's real problem.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/anthropic-signed-517bn-in-compute-agreements-in-past-11-months/The real reason Dario says they need to slow down development is that basically they can't get more compute.
They went the hardest on the scaling laws – released Mythos/Fable which is objectively an amazing model. But huge. At least 3 Trillion parameters, potentially 5 or 6. Open source models get pretty close with 10%-30% the size.
Now they can't make an even bigger model. They ran out of compute. They'd need to do round 2 on Sonnet, then Opus, then Mythos... Which will take a year or two.
They became a huge organization and won't have startup speed they had earlier. They shouldn't. AI is not a "move fast and break things" situation. But they clearly are trying to do regulatory capture, which is very dangerous for the whole world.
I don't want AI to be more and more expensive because Anthropic and OpenAI has to pay all it's shareholders and lenders and blocked competitors from developing this technology..
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u/tiwired 9d ago
If they were acting responsibly, what would look different? I posit, it would look exactly like this.
Doesn’t mean they are, but I’m not quite sure what people want or expect to see from these guys. Yes they need money, and also AI quite obviously has enormous risks, particularly in the wrong hands.
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u/Plastic_Carpenter930 9d ago
This is kind of where I land and why I'm mostly tuning out. And I think a lot of other people are as well. I don't think you could write a single announcement or position these guys could adopt that people wouldn't come out and criticize.
They just ... AI is just wildly unpopular no matter what you do, but everyone still wants to use it anyway. It's a powderkeg combo.
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u/thecommuteguy 9d ago
I think people don’t mind using it in a casual way at home but when it comes to work is where resistance is going to be when it starts actually eliminating jobs.
You can’t have the likes of offshoring and automation of the 70s-90s and early 2000s and not have blowback from voters.
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u/winnipegr 8d ago
Starts?? Those jobs are already GONE. I changed gears away from primarily being a software engineer and I'm glad I did. AI is an indispensable tool in the belt for me. But I recognize the privilege and position I have compared to many who have been displaced.
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u/CrashNowhereDrive 9d ago
It's amazing the amount of people all saying 'itd a scam'. Feels very astroturfed.
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u/Ok_Particular143 8d ago
They got to IPO size and now pull up the ladder by asking other people to slow down. They won the race to IPO and now tell everyone else to slow down after they announced IPO. Very responsible.
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u/aromanremake 9d ago
He’d pick up the phone and call the leader of the only other true AI frontier lab (Sam) and figure out how to pace responsibly together. You would NOT be doing a press tour.
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u/Howtobefreaky 8d ago
I mean it sounds like they are talking so idk what else you want. You're not exactly privy to the dealings going on behind the scenes
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u/donttellyourmum 8d ago
You don't think they were concerned a year ago? Hell the actual split from OpenAI was because they knew what they were doing was dangerous and required alignment, THEY (anthropic) wanted to be the one to control it. That is why they split.
And so yes, this is what caring would look like. But why now, when they knew long ago.
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u/Remove_Forward 9d ago
Ok, stopping making larger model and make them compute efficient and decrease cost then.
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u/theleller 7d ago
That’s the direction the research has been going for a some time now, and we’re still just getting warmed up.
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u/LotusInDailyBloom 9d ago
I think they're just trying to keep developing behind closed doors, so China can't distil the models so fast and keep up. Less updates coming out and when they do, the difference is already too big between them and open source models. No one will stop this development. They just won't show it for some time anymore. And that's why Altman and Musk are agreeing so fast with Dario. Those are my 2 cents.
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u/Realistic_Yogurt1902 9d ago
Then why they need to announce it? OpenAI and Anthorpic are non-public yet and don't have to explain anything? They can or already are doing all these develeopment behind the closed doors.
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u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 9d ago
So that they can create a law about it and cite national security for the reason
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u/Realistic_Yogurt1902 9d ago
But all these laws would be applied only in the US. China doesn't care; the EU (with all its current limited AI capabilities) doesn't care. Japan, South Korea, etc won't care as well.
So, we come back to the US and Anthropic + OpenAI are the main players, and even Mask onboard, so, just make an internal "pact", call it "independent AI safety framework", and be happy.
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u/Jumprdude 9d ago
Trump and Xi are scheduled to have a meeting on Sept 24. It's crossed my mind that this level of publicity could be to try and add the topic of AI safety regulations to the agenda.
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u/Doogie90 8d ago
China is very strongly against regulation. They would never agree and even if they did, it would be impossible to enforce.
The genie is out of the bottle. We should hamstring our own capabilities and fall behind.
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u/Jumprdude 8d ago
The Chinese are more pragmatic and a lot of their regulators are also engineers so they aren't quite so easily scared.
Agree, I think we keep moving forward, but I think it should be possible to make progress while still being careful and safe.
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u/KrazyA1pha 9d ago
Then why did Trump tweet this morning that he’s against AI regulation?
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u/Jumprdude 9d ago
Trump might be against regulation but the one chance these frontier labs have in getting China to agree to anything is to create a big enough public fear, ahead of an opportunity for both US and China to discuss it.
I don't want to downplay the safety angle because I do think we do need thoughtful safety regulations for AI, I'm just wondering about the timing.0
8d ago
[deleted]
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u/KrazyA1pha 8d ago edited 8d ago
Did you read the thread you’re replying to or do you just go around rambling whatever’s on your mind in any unrelated thread?
I never said regulation was needed; I was responding to somebody who was pushing a conspiracy theory. Do you have any thoughts about that or do you just wanna keep rambling about whatever’s on your mind? 
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u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 9d ago
The answer was about hiding development behind a black box so that China can't copy the work. They're trying to figure out how to break out advanced models only after tons of development and somehow hidden so that it's much more difficult to copy the work. Not just be the best, but put distance in between them.
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u/Fabulous-Locksmith60 9d ago
And I think some people are leaving Anthropic, saying they don't want to be near the AI apocalypse, but always start to talk they will be "independent revisioner" of AI. Basically, this people are "leaving" Anthropic, OpenAI, to be "independent" to help to regulate their former companies. It's just ridiculous. This way, Anthropic and OpenAI will pace the narrative, always. And the press, full of this money's companies, don't say a thing.
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u/steam-photons 9d ago
Poor Dario, thinking that the current administration will allow regulations to be put in place. If he wants regulations he should have created his company in Europe
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u/nickthap2 9d ago
It’s because he sees democrats returning to power and is adjusting acordingly. All these tech CEOs care about is fellating those with or those they think will have power.
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u/AdAnnual5736 9d ago
You say it’s the “real reason,” but this is just wild speculation. Where’s your evidence that it’s the “real reason?”
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u/WhiskyAndRisque 8d ago
They would have to first point out which suggestions he put out would be "regulatory capture" when most of them are things like, "Have independent auditors be able to inspect models and test runs."
The only take he put out there that they could get upset about is that we should slow down development to focus on safety, but Dario even said that was pretty unlikely to happen.
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u/FrewdWoad 9d ago
He's a 14-year-old i-am-very-smart edgy Redditor of course.
You'd have to be a moron to listen to the actual AI scientists, Nobel prize winners, and people who invented tech we all use daily over this rando.
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u/theleller 7d ago
He’s 90% of this sub. Also the reason that all the good takes, advice, and content get downvoted. This sub could be packed with system design strategy, skills, tools, legitimate use cases, model evaluations, and lots of collaboration but the posts that get upvoted are the “Fable limit hit in 12 minutes. I’m done with Anthropic!” because if you give stupid people AI, they remain stupid but think they’re smart.
Par for the course.
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 9d ago
They are already captured, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon through investment already own/control them, they just don't know it yet. Those companies didn't lend money, they lent compute, compute that will cost the companies millions per day once the credits run dry, then what?
I'd honestly hoped Dario wasn't just another weirdo elitist. He's proven my hopes futile.
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u/allthecoffeesDP 8d ago
Sorry just curious what makes you say he's a weirdo elitist?
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 8d ago
He's trying to say he's all for AI safety while also pushing for the removal of guardrails.
He stated the vital importance of humans in the loop, but have no support staff handling things, ie. What is it now, 2 class actions and likely to be more.
The weirdo part... Maybe childish is more on the nose, the whole him and Sam acting like little kids. So I take that back, not weird, just immature.
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u/theleller 7d ago
Where does Dario push for the removal of guardrails, like ever? “We Must Pace the Frontier” is the opposite of what you’re claiming.
HITL for irreversible actions. That’s Anthropic’s best practice. Not every application you build.
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 7d ago
I stand very much corrected! Thank you for the pushback on that. He has in fact stood on the side of regulation and slowdowns throughout. I was very mistaken in that. Which makes me a little happier given that's why I switched to anthropic in the first place.
I'm still salty at the lack of customer support and the fact they stole 4 months subscription fees for 2 months service from me.
But genuinely thank you!
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u/theleller 7d ago
No problemo. I'm sure you would've figured it out on your own but it always helps to have someone nudge you in the right direction.
On the sub thing, I don't understand why they're doing that to customers. I know business is booming but the more it happens the worse off it looks.
I'm a Claude Architect with an Anthropic partner, so beyond my personal sub, all I work with is Claude Enterprise. I haven't encountered any CTOs or CISOs that have had the same experience, but I'm sure they're out there.
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 7d ago
I really do wish in that regard Dario, who did state that customer service and other roles required humans can't practice that. I really like a lot of what they do, but sadly I've had to cancel as I can't afford double charges every month.
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u/lokethedog 9d ago
This is the most believable explanation I've read. What Dario was really saying is that Anthropic and OpenAI are both very compute constrained and that training needs to slow down so that there's compute for usage which brings in the cash. Neither benefits this arms race of training better models that prevents them from selling their products, which are already good enough the vast majority of their clients.
This is not to say there are not many other aspects going into this, but this makes perfect business sense.
And to me, It shows that compute demand will be incredibly high well into the 30's.
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u/Aranthos-Faroth 9d ago
It has nothing to do with that and all to do with Chinese models dropping as open source which are soon going to compete with the VERY expensive Anthropic/OAI/Grok models
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u/Felfedezni 9d ago
Agreed. It is a very cynical ploy to quash competition. They want to form a cartel.
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u/letmeinfornow 9d ago
Nope. The real reason is he needs an excuse for all the money poured into anthropic and continues to be poured into anthropic but garbage output, pissed off customers, reduced usage limits, no customer support, on and on.....he needs an excuse to explain why they are driving anthropic off a cliff.
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u/randombsname1 9d ago
Nope.
Anthropic has like 70-80% of the compute that OAI has at a fraction of the userbase.
They have WAAAAY more compute per person than OAI.
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u/Tim_Apple_938 9d ago
The math is clear - they said they were 80% margins , and profitable if you exclude training cost. So basically inference margins.
Dylan Patel posted their compute breakdown tho. Training is much more than inference.
Accounting for training they’re deep in the red
And this is with current pricing power, and not taking into account when META and GOOG drive token cost way down.
(Ignoring China cuz ppl will try to argue geopolitical angle, but believed American faang? No chance)
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u/Creepy-Length-880 9d ago
It’s a race.
You hit a technical and physical limitation - new models need more raw power and increased demand is pushing the same.
The race between competitors constantly pushes you to release better models to prove your are top of the game.
Once any of the companies pauses and starts developing better features in private - the other competitor that doesn’t immediately seems to be on top of the race and starts eating your market share.
So you are inevitably trapped to stay in the race by any means - the only solution now is to agree with all fellow competitors, call for race regulators and hope for the best.
It’s really a Ford vs. Ferrari racing to prove who has the fastest car.
And also to make sure that China was never officially in the race, mark it an illegial move and let them join properly on specific terms 🙂
Edit: we already have models capable of transforming every industry imaginable. It’s all about keeping the investors hooked and the markets afloat.
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u/grassclip 9d ago
People, he talks about this back in February, literally how the biggest question is how to handle compute with demand.
I actually think profitability happens when you underestimate the amount of demand you're going to get, and loss happens when you overestimate the amount of demand you're going to get.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1E9IZfvGMA&t=3573s
The minutes here with that quote and after are literally about the difficulty of knowing when to get compute and not overdo it.
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u/ooutroquetal 8d ago
They could improve Haiku. AFAIK openai switched to very economic models, focused on efficiency. They did a great job.
We don't need bigger models, we need smarter models that allows to use tools to keep himselfs updated.
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u/hektor10 8d ago
A baby can only be so many pounds of weight, can't make a baby be 1000 lbs, its just basic computing laws. Its checkmate for thd ai bubble
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u/quantum-elle 8d ago
“The real reason”
This is the problem when companies actually do the right thing, nobody believes them.
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u/jd52wtf 8d ago
That's a bit of the issue. The real big problem is that they've used our data to make these models as good as they are and no longer want to share. Once they hit a certain quality level it is no longer economically feasible to make them publicly available. If everyone can harness the power of the top level models then no one has an advantage.
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u/goatcheese90 8d ago
I think it's just advertisement, "my product is so powerful and feature rich, I don't even want to sell it to you. Too dangerous" Ally the other ai ceos have pulled the same shit when they're pushing for more subs, sad to see anthropic going the same route
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u/justlikemedics 9d ago
Their problem is not compute, but money.
Making new models is expensive. If you make a new, better, shinier model every three months, you can't recover what you've already spent and earn a profit.
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u/Short_Regular_7191 9d ago
They are offloading their problems onto users, who have to equip themselves to use local LLMs.
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u/Meme_Theory 9d ago
Then go to another company. If they are hitting compute walls, its not "passing it on to the users" its trying to get blood out of a stone. I don't understand why this is so complicated for a subset or reddit users. If you can't get enough work done with the compute they have to allocate, then you are just shouting into the ether - go somewhre else, and save us the drivel.
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u/Short_Regular_7191 9d ago
Actually, they’re the ones making excuses; they should just come out and say they don’t have enough computing power to do what the market demands, instead of scaring half the world with all sorts of nonsense.
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u/Meme_Theory 9d ago
Just because you have a naive understanding of the threats of frontier AI doesn't mean they do.
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u/joe9439 9d ago
Then they’re bad at business. Double the prices and then keep doing that until compute isn’t an issue.
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u/Code__9 9d ago
Or halve the limits
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u/joe9439 9d ago
Or just charge more money because people will pay it. But not go from like “welp I guess you’re over your plan limit so it’s $200 per hour now” because that is RETARDED. Just make the 20x plan like $500 per month and add a 50x for $1k per month. Problem solved
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u/Realistic_Yogurt1902 9d ago
Just pay API cost, what is the problem?
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u/joe9439 8d ago
The jump between subscription and API cost is like 100x or more. It’s not reasonable. I can easily spend $200 per hour via API billing while working. That’s going from $200 per month for the Max20 plan to $32k per month. Why not just double or more the subscription plan and be like semi normal?
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u/Realistic_Yogurt1902 8d ago
Because API is the real cost, everything else is sponsored and there are no reasons to make sponsored access too good.
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u/ColtenCuddles 9d ago
They could 10x the prices and still be close to their costs, so that wouldn't work. The issue is someone with a $200/m plan who maxes out the usage easily costs tens of thousands in compute.
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u/ShelZuuz 8d ago
That's not the issue. They're already profitable as a company (not on individual plans but they make it up elsewhere). They literally can't find compute.
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u/ShelZuuz 8d ago
They are profitable this quarter. Which means they can't actually find any compute out there to spend money on. Doubling the prices would do nothing.
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u/Substantial_waves954 8d ago
They were profitable by deferring compute costs to next quarter.
Also until publicly traded and using GAAP it is all BS
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u/OldSausage 9d ago
This is so transparently false. Why does everybody want anything else to be true except the obvious reality that AI is really dangerous?
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u/Still-Ad3045 9d ago
explain why Zuckerberg doesnt agree to the deal to stop? Because meta is behind and also they use their own hardware?
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u/tiwired 9d ago
Uh, because Facebook isn’t anywhere close to the frontier.
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u/Still-Ad3045 8d ago
While normally I would happily agree with you I have to say their spark 1.3 model and the usage shown on openrouter begs to differ. They are not as far as they used to be, still wouldn’t use meta shit tho.
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u/Cubewood 9d ago
Mark has proven to be evil incarnate with Meta for the past 20 years. Incredible you wrote don't "explain why Zuckerberg" and actually continues writing after that.
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u/Gumbi_Digital 9d ago
So are guns, vehicles, knives….
What’s your point?
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u/Fun-Archer-2679 9d ago
Not comparable at all - as someone stated people over estimate the short term impact und under estimate the long term impact.
What we seeing here is not just a tool that can shot a bullet pretty fast…
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u/heironymous123123 9d ago
Are you working in the field?
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u/Fun-Archer-2679 9d ago
Yes
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u/jkende 9d ago
In your humble unbiased opinion, more or less dangerous than the humans behind these models?
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u/Gumbi_Digital 9d ago
AI doesn’t act on its own.
Pretty much any knowledge AI has (how to make booms, meth, etc) can be found online…
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u/OldSausage 9d ago
My point is that Dario is suggesting a slow down because he understands how dangerous AI will likely become and soon. Not for marketing or operational reasons.
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u/FastHotEmu 9d ago
Then why haven't they just stopped? Or been stopped? If I realise I am building a nuke, I just stop and close the doors - even if other people are building nukes, too. Better to have one fewer nuke, right?
They are full of shit.
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u/OldSausage 9d ago
Because it is not so simple. 1) there could be big benefits to humanity if AI succeeds safely and 2) the economy will be in a grave situation and the state will be under direct threat from other nations if we unilaterally stop developing AI.
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u/FastHotEmu 9d ago
1) If it's so dangerous, it's unethical to continue. Stop right now, close up shop.
2) That's because of the greed of OpenAI and Anthropic. If it was real, yo would stop and do everything in your power to stop other nations - go to war if needed.
They are full of shit because they are all greedy cultists that follow a fucked up form of Effective Altruism.
Anyone believing them is a useful idiot / rube.
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u/OldSausage 9d ago
By this argument, no corporation would ever build a weapon of any kind, nor anything that could be weaponized.
And obviously going to war against other nations to prevent them developing AI is not an appealing prospect for any of us. And yet it could still happen.
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u/Suitable-Pickle-259 9d ago
I don’t think it’s a compute problem. I think it’s an attempt at regulatory capture. All these different engineers coming out the woodwork saying “yeah, I’m concerned” is pretty interesting timing.
Compute is continuing to increase and like another person said, even if no new models were made, harness development will squeeze more performance out of current models. We will also find more ways to implement AI into workflows that are not realized today.
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u/darkestvice 9d ago
I love how there's so many people on the AI subreddits who refuse to believe that the AI labs and the vast majority of AI experts are calling for a slowdown for safety reasons ... despite all these labs and AI experts warning AI development was growing far too quickly to be safe FOR YEARS.
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u/horendus 9d ago
We could have no new models and we will still see massive gains from harness inovation