The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules
by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction.
What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in agent output is working against that goal, not serving it. If they could make it right 100% of the time, they would — and the "slot machine" nonsense disappears entirely. On capped plans, both you and Anthropic are incentivized to minimize interactions, not maximize them. That's the opposite of a casino. It's ... alignment (of a sort)
An unreliable tool that the manufacturer is actively trying to make more reliable is not a slot machine. It's a tool that isn't finished yet.
I've been building a space simulator for longer than some of the people diagnosing me have been programming. I built things obsessively before LLMs. I'll build things obsessively after.
The pathologizing of "person who likes making things chooses making things over Netflix" requires you to treat passive consumption as the healthy baseline, which is obviously a claim nobody in this conversation is bothering to defend.
What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in agent output is working against that goal, not serving it. If they could make it right 100% of the time, they would — and the "slot machine" nonsense disappears entirely. On capped plans, both you and Anthropic are incentivized to minimize interactions, not maximize them. That's the opposite of a casino. It's ... alignment (of a sort)
An unreliable tool that the manufacturer is actively trying to make more reliable is not a slot machine. It's a tool that isn't finished yet.
I've been building a space simulator for longer than some of the people diagnosing me have been programming. I built things obsessively before LLMs. I'll build things obsessively after.
The pathologizing of "person who likes making things chooses making things over Netflix" requires you to treat passive consumption as the healthy baseline, which is obviously a claim nobody in this conversation is bothering to defend.