这应该是今天英区最炸裂的瓜了:
Anthropic 被曝间接“买通”AI评级机构,其关联资金甚至故意买稿制造“AI毁灭论”。
有独立调查博主发布了一份重磅财务审计指控,直指 Anthropic 涉嫌间接资金操纵,核心事实有两个:
第一,Anthropic 正在通过隐秘的基金网络,间接资助负责审查它的“第三方”评测机构;
第二,这批资金同时在操纵媒体,故意向公众制造并放大“AI 毁灭人类”的恐慌。
需要注意的是,目前这仍是博主个人独立调查,暂无实锤,官方也暂未给出正面回应。
但顺着他的查账路线,其揭露的整个利益链条运作细节依然令人细思极恐:
1. AI 评测机构的饭碗,靠 Anthropic 的股票撑着?
Anthropic 一直向政府呼吁,应由第三方独立机构(如 METR)来评估 AI 风险。
但博主调查指出,METR 背后的最大金主,是 Facebook 联合创始人名下的慈善基金。
这笔基金的钱从哪来?
正是该创始人早期投资 Anthropic 的股份,如今估值暴涨至约 77 亿美元。理论上意味着,他作为股东把 Anthropic 的股票放进了基金池,再用基金去资助评测机构。
这意味着:评测机构的“大金主”与 Anthropic 的市值深度绑定。
如果 Anthropic 垮了,金主的资产盘子大缩水,评测机构也会跟着断粮。表面是独立第三方,底子里是利益共同体。
2/ 花钱买“AI末日论”的媒体通稿
上周你是否刷推看到一个铺天盖地的新闻?
有个研究员小哥从AI 大厂离职发了离职信,表示 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 等大厂意识到了 AI 10年内即将毁灭人类的威力,美国主流电视台媒体甚至还采访了这个人。
而现在博主调查的结论是,这类 AI 末日论的焦虑,可能是故意买稿散播的。
这笔吃着 Anthropic 估值红利的钱,不仅养了评测机构,还流向了大量外围组织,如 Tarbell Center 这类非营利新闻调查机构。
它们拿钱办事,专门在《时代周刊》、《科学》等主流媒体上投放“AI 末日论”。
所以,他认为大众每天刷到的“AI 失控危机”,其实是一场被特定资金精心喂养出来的公关行动。
3. 花钱黑自己,图啥呢?
如果这笔基金的钱和 Anthropic 有关,那又买稿说 AI 会威胁人类,不是砸了自己的生意吗?
这个想法过于简单了,在博主的帖子里,他认为目的在于Anthropic 先放大危机,再以 AI 寡头的垄断身份来解决危机,以此俘获监管的心。
外围机构负责在前端向公众贩卖问题,宣扬“AI 会毁灭人类”,制造焦虑,提供舆论弹药。
当恐慌达到顶峰,Anthropic 等巨头就能顺理成章地在后端向政府“贩卖解决方案”:
呼吁必须出台极其严苛的 AI 监管法案,并要求必须由“指定机构”(比如他们资助的 METR)来进行审查。
这种被倒逼出来的严苛监管,势必伴随着极高的合规成本。
而巨头们花得起这笔钱,但却能借此直接将开源生态和没钱做合规的中小 AI 创业者,掐死在摇篮里。至此目的达到。
不过目前一整串爆料,也没有完全实锤的证据,更像是逻辑上说得通的蛛丝马迹。
原贴评论区一部分人觉得和体感符合,能解释近几年 AI 安全话术、监管叙事和评估机构站位为何总缠在一起。
而另一部分人则认为夸大了事实,风险投资/慈善基金投自己看好的赛道,再资助配套非营利评测机构是常态,不等于评估结果被买通。
不过,如果最后结果被证实为真,那国内观众对类似操作应该很熟,数码评测博主有时实际上已经被金主提前充值了,再发布评测内容。
前有当年罗永浩大战王自如质疑科技评测的客观性,现在有啥咱也不敢说。
I have conducted an audit of Anthropic's finances.
What I have found is so shocking that I am calling for a Congressional investigation.
Anthropic is not just seeking regulatory capture.
It has built a regulatory capture machine that cannot be turned off.
Structural financial incentives make it impossible for Anthropic -- I call it the Anthropic Network -- to turn off its own AI doom cycle.
It starts with METR.
Dario Amodei proposes "third-party evaluators" to assess the risk of Anthropic's models.
He proposes METR for this purpose.
But METR is financially dependent on the Anthropic's success -- specifically, on the explosive growth of more than $7 billion dollars in Anthropic stock.
Dustin Moskovitz invested this stock into Good Ventures Foundation, where it represents the majority of that organization's portfolio.
And GVF is the overwhelming funder of the entire Anthropic Network ecosystem.
This stock was worth $500 million early last year.
It is worth more than $7.7 billion just ~16 months later.
METR -- and all of those building a career its parent organizations -- cannot afford to disrupt that growth.
Because if Anthropic goes under, many of the organizations that fund METR go under as well.
But if Anthropic succeeds, METR and its parent organizations become more richly financed to regulate AI -- something those at METR want very much.
The "third-party evaluator" is not "third-party" at all.
The evaluator is on Anthropic's payroll.
If this were the end of it, that's bad.
But that isn't all.
The same organizations that fund METR also fund the many organizations, such as the Tarbell Center, that promote AI Doom.
The Tarbell Center publishes AI Doom articles in The Verge, Science, LA Times, The Dispatch, TIME, and others.
They are selling the problem, and then selling the solution to the problem -- from the same money pile: Anthropic's.
All of these organizations are financially dependent on the same exploding $7 billion money pile.
As Anthropic grows more and more powerful, its AI Doom Machine grows better and better financed -- louder and louder.
Meanwhile, the regulatory regime seeded in METR grows larger to solve the increasingly loud -- now hysterical -- problem of AI Doom that the Anthropic Network itself created.
From this standpoint, as Anthropic becomes more powerful, AI might be getting scarier, sure -- but the positive feedback loop also becomes more deafening -- independent of objective facts.
This itself is an objective fact.
The deafening AI Doom is part of an business model, that, as it expands, so too does the AI Doom messaging -- there is simply more money to do it.
But the problem also goes in the other direction:
If Anthropic dies, the Regulatory Regime and the AI Doom Machine are crippled or die.
Neither METR nor Tarbell nor the other organizations in the Anthropic Network can allow that to happen.
Hence, neither METR or the AI Doom Machine can be trusted to provide independent assessments of Anthropic's models or AI more broadly.
They simply are not organizations independent of Anthropic.
And Anthropic cannot detach itself from METR or Tarbell or countless other safety orgs (not shown here), either, because they drive hype for the models and the possibility of eventual regulatory capture, and Anthropic will not give that up willingly.
What's more, the people at all of these organizations are all the same ecosystem, the same community. They just shuffle between organizations.
The Anthropic Network is therefore, so long as it is successful, locked into a self-amplifying feedback loop inside an ideological monoculture.
And that feedback loop is winning.
That's what Jacob Coxon is.
China is keeping messaging tight. That is why optimism for AI is so high in China.
America has Anthropic: a massive company pushing anti-AI propaganda at a state level.
Anthropic will either create hysteria until American AI slows down and China wins, or it will create fractures throughout American society with severe political consequences.
Ironically, because of the structural financial incentives underpinning the Anthropic Network, it has become the same kind of self-amplifying virus that it fantasizes AI to become in the future -- while hiding its tracks just as carefully.
It is the mirror of the same AI virus that it hypothesizes to consume America.
Anthropic's business model, models itself after the very thing it claims to fear.
Except Anthropic's ideology infects humans, not computers.
Congress must investigate.
Evidence and Github in next post.
Then some supplementary figures.
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