Working title: Now all your moneys are belong to us<\/i><\/p>\n
There are eight mentions in the draft S-1 submission document by Anthropic that say, and I paraphrase, “the value of investments can do down as well as up, but mostly down, in our case.” I didn’t count them, but the inestimable Ed Zitron did. Thanks Ed, you’re a stronger man than me.<\/p>\n
The draft S-1 (an S-1 is a dense financial document that has to be submitted to grown-ups in America before you can list your company on the stock exchange) had lots of gaps in it where numbers would traditionally appear. These included trifling details like costs and revenues that the company’s experienced in the last three months.<\/p>\n
Remember, the value of investments can go down as well as up. You have been warned.<\/p>\n
The way I hear it, Anthropic has had some months of cheap deals for computing power courtesy of that Musk character (you know, the fascist?). So its figures in the draft S-1 looked not-entirely disastrous. Not good, not even attractive to the most careless investor, but better than the horror show that is the daily reality of bizness at Anthropic.<\/p>\n
Now the deal’s coming to an end, and Dario Amodei et al.<\/i> are back to paying normal money for all that energy-intensive compute, so the figures are back to being truly horrible. (Anyone would think the timing of the draft S-1 was deliberate or something.) The horrible figures are those that are represented by whitespace on the draft S-1.<\/p>\n
But you were warned, like, on eight separate occasions in the paper, that things could actually be a bit shit financially if you invest in Anthropic. And, as a responsible investor, you read the paper \u2013 didn’t you?<\/p>\n
This flotation will happen. Of course it will, thanks to whatever the US government’s putting in the drinking water over there. Plus, no doubt, the shares will be classified as “a really safe bet AAAA+++” by the self-regulating ratings agencies. Seems inevitable, given that drinking water issue. Then, pension funds and insurance companies will be able to invest everyone’s savings in Anthropic. Goody!<\/p>\n
But, you were warned, in eight separate little clauses, that the value of investments can go down as well as up.<\/p>\n
Will Anthropic release a real S-1 with real figures in it? It doesn’t really matter does it? The thing’s gonna float anyway. Because? Because of the stuff in the drinking water in the US. I guess it’s all OK. It will all be OK.<\/p>\n
Naturally, holders of stock in Anthropic (senior bods, execs, their chums and their chums’ tennis partners) have made sure that the figures describing how quickly they can cash out their shares were<\/i> in the draft S-1. That bit was very detailed and had no gaps in it. Well done, everyone.<\/p>\n
Still, the power of AI will transform society, as we know, so it’ll all be worth it. Sadly for 99% of the population, or those with a pension, or a mandatory insurance policy, or who live in a society where barter of goods isn’t the generally-accepted means of getting by, the transformation in society will comprise of life getting really rather uncomfortable. But, hey, capitalism! You read the draft S-1 with great care, and, on reflection, it all seemed like a good bet.<\/p>\n
I think I’d be a lot more cheerful if large language models brought about anything half decent. And of course, didn’t involve burning more fossil fuel, mass copyright infringement, the wholesale breaking of software licences, the price of electronics going through the roof, the use of slave labour to post-train the models, the promotion of flaky right-wing ideologies by the AI “leaders” and the reduction of the internet to a pool of unusable slop.<\/p>\n
But Enid, I hear you cry, AI is useful! I can write python much faster! It’s useful! Aye, and so is child labour. Kids work for sweets and comics, and do nearly as much work as an adult. Very useful that is.<\/p>\n
Just cos it’s useful, doesn’t mean you need to use it. In the same way, just because you could punch Sam Altman in the face, doesn’t mean you should. Actually, of course, you should, given the chance.<\/p>\n
There is a sense of inevitability to the Anthropic stock market flotation and what will ensue afterwards. No one saw it coming because the LLM summary of the draft S-1 didn’t say anything negative. So that’s OK, then. Good luck comrades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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