harry19023

yes? feature flags have been a thing for a long time.

If you need stability for your business you can pay API prices, just like business plans for internet are also more expensive.

The the article was talking about how Anthropic costs too much and how there are cheaper options available then yes I would agree with you. But this article has a conspiratorial and moral crusade tone which is what I'm responding to. The article says "In my opinion (which may be in the minority), it’s unethical to:

lock in your customers to a closed system for maximum market gain put down the competition when they pose a risk to your product make hypocritical claims on how your product increases quality when your own software sucks artificially restrict one’s own product as a fear-mongering marketing stunt test dynamic pricing on your users to see how much more they’ll pay for less change the terms of your product after the sale without notifying your user base"

anthropic is not just a business operating in a market, they are "unethical" and "fear-mongering" and "hypocritical".

Yes, the subsidized loss leader product is evolving fast. If you want stable costs, the API plan is right there. You simultaneously say they cannot afford the API pricing but also claim they are overcharging, it sounds like you just want to get mad ad Anthropic.

Agreed. The level of entitlement around how we all deserve to use a product in a category that didn't even exist 12 months ago with increasing performance at the same price forever is insane.

"And its like he claims "its not ai data centers themselves, its the construction of them" as if its an important distinction that exempts data centers from harm. It's not."

But this has nothing to do with data centers, it has to do with construction. I think getting every mad at all new construction in general is a very dangerous path to go down.

"On one hand, I actually don’t begrudge Anthropic not wanting to help its competitors; on the other hand, what should be blisteringly clear is that Anthropic does not think that anyone else other than them should even be making frontier LLMs."

I don't find this blisteringly clear at all. A company making it harder for competitors to steal their IP is perfectly normal. This is Ben Thompson's personal grudge against Anthropic showing, yet again. He can't think rationally about this company.

That's the whole point. The OP was lamenting that consumers are getting less for selling their behind-the-meter solar, but if everyone has behind-the-meter solar then that solar is cheap to worthless when the sun is shining. And that's a good thing! The sun is free, all of us utilizing it during the day for free means electricity is cheap during the day. It's when the sun sets and all that solar goes offline and demand rises that electricity gets expensive again.

This analogy makes no sense. You and I can go use Claude right now. The government clearly doesn't think they are nukes. If the government wants to control this technology like a weapon then it should do that, but that's not what's happening.

Ben says over and over again that he's not making the argument about the importance of democratic oversight, but he clearly is. He doesn't like Amodei and is happy to see him fail, and it comes through loud and clear in the piece.

Anthropic, like any other US company, should be free to not sell to the government if they don't want to. These other arguments about oversight are nonsense.