Austin Corbett

Claude Opus 4.6 has crossed some sort of invisible threshold for me; the amount of context I can introduce and the level of analysis it is doing, combined with the fact that accuracy seems much higher is actually extremely time saving and useful, in a way LLMs previously were not. It's revelatory.

Polycrisis

What this does to military A.I. capabilities is beyond the brief of this newsletter, except to say that I think it’s “bad” for Grok, the pedophile mechahitler A.I., to be involved with weapons in really any way. What I am interested in, here, is what this reveals about the state of politics in Silicon Valley. In a sentence, I think what’s happening is (1) basic (i.e. normal) cutthroat competition between rival firms for government contracts, which is both driving and being driven by (2) an open and ongoing political-ideological dispute between two factions of Silicon Valley capital, which is in turn informing and being informed by (3) an almost religious disagreement about the nature of the god being built on the computer.

To start, it seems quite obvious that the Tech Right--a bloc of right-wing, Trump-aligned executives, investors, podcasters, Twitter personalities, firms, and companies, among them Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale and Alex Karp, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, and, of course, xAI’s Elon Musk--with its extensive links to the administration, has been exerting behind-the-scenes pressure on Hegseth and the Pentagon to sever ties with or otherwise punish Anthropic. It was a Palantir executive, after all, who snitched on Anthropic to the D.o.D., and Hegseth’s speech in January about “objectively truthful AI capabilities” was a close echo of Musk’s ramblings about his “maximally truth-seeking” model Grok. The Tech Right’s contempt for Anthropic is first and foremost financial in nature. Musk, obviously, would like xAI to be first in line for any government contracts. (Indeed, Hegseth announced a deal with xAI this week to use Grok under the Pentagon’s preferred “all lawful use” terms.) And I suspect Palantir, Anthropic client though it may be, has the same existential fear of Claude as McKinsey or Salesforce or any other consultancy or software-as-a-service provider. If Anthropic is aggressively courting the D.o.D. to contract directly, and if Claude is as good as every thinks, what does Palantir’s future as a data-analytics-in-camo platform actually look like?

This doesn’t necessarily separate him from any other Silicon Valley liberal. But I think it’s good to attend to the valence of his liberalism. Amodei, like most of the Anthropic executives and many people in the A.I. in general, has long been associated with the worlds of Bay Area Rationalism and Effective Altruism--wonkily utilitarian philosophical and philanthropic practices focused on self-described rationalist inquiry and self-improvement. Bay Area Rationalism is a loose and diverse movement, containing a host of political perspectives, but it’s always had a particular concern with moral philosophy as it relates to the expected development of artificial superintelligence. To be a Rationalist liberal democrat (small-L small-D), e.g., might mean orienting your liberal democrat-ness toward its practical applications around the eschatological scenario of hard-takeoff A.G.I.

I don’t mean to suggest that Amodei’s commitments to liberal democracy are inauthentic. More that, as far he is concerned the stakes of this commitment go well beyond his own moral or ethical culpability. The decisions he makes now, and his consistent practice to his espoused beliefs, could mean the difference between a benevolent computer god and a wrathful one. X avatar for @hlntnr Helen Toner @hlntnr One thing the Pentagon is very likely underestimating: how much Anthropic cares about what *future Claudes* will make of this situation. Because of how Claude is trained, what principles/values/priorities the company demonstrate here could shape its "character" for a long time. Andrew Curran @AndrewCurran_ Update on the meeting; according to Axios Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Dario Amodei until Friday night to give the military unfettered access to Claude or face the consequences, which may even include invoking the Defense Production Act to force the training of a WarClaude 4:26 PM · Feb 25, 2026 · 227K Views 41 Replies · 122 Reposts · 1.96K Likes And this has placed him, and Anthropic, on a collision course with the Tech Right. Musk, too, believes he is bringing superintelligence into existence at xAI. But for him the urgenct imp

one way of seeing anthropic vs. the pentagon is as a fissure between the two silicon valley tribes most enthusiastic about ai: "rationalists" and "accelerationists"

maxread.substack.com/p/what-anthr...

I think everyone, even AI alarmists, is in denial about the knowledge and capability crisis we’re careening into.

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Here's a 2024 letter from Danielle Smith to Justin Trudeau complaining about federal immigration limits affecting Alberta.

www.alberta.ca/system/files...

#Alberta #abpoli #Canada #cdnpoli

Excerpt From
“Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announces fall referendum on immigration, constitutional questions”
Michelle Bellefontaine
CBC News
apple.news/A4Cz_GvQ4RIy...
This material may be protected by copyright.

Hahaha!

Exactly none of this is possible.

“Smith: allowing provinces to choose justices for their superior courts; abolishing the Senate; provinces to drop out of federal programs while still receiving federal funding; and giving provincial laws priority over conflicting federal legislation”

three bananas are standing next to each other on a video game screen . ALT: three bananas are standing next to each other on a video game screen .

Can we talk about some of the oil-related stuff in the Premier's address? I'll get into the immigration piece in a column tomorrow, but some of the assumptions around oil production and exports she was using were....bananas?

Which is that it is good for simplistic and repetitive tasks you don't want to do yourself, or ingestion of material that you don't need to be 100% accurate but as you "step up the gradient" to more complex analytical problems it falls flat.

Interesting. I haven't done too much on the code-side of things because my use-case there is generally something like "make me a bash script to count PDF pages in a folder" which is not particularly complex. A gradient tracks with what I see overall though -1/2

Curious what you mean; I've seen a gradual (incremental) advancement in tasks being able to be done, but my requirements are pretty low and the tasks pretty limited to things LLMs are generally good at. Do you mean there is a gulf in capability between doable tasks and not-doable ones?

Province broke its own access to information laws in withholding Alberta Next survey results The Alberta government wrongly withheld hundreds of pages of results from its Alberta Next surveys an adjudicator has ruled.

This current UCP/Alberta Government is trying to create a consensus for radical change to our Province. They are more than willing to break the law, (the law they wrote!) in order to hide their attempts to do so from public scrutiny:
edmontonjournal.com/news/politic...

When Will the UCP Come Clean on Separatist Goals? | The Tyee Revelations about secret plans and separatist MLAs should shake Albertans out of complacency.

A headline in Friday’s Calgary Herald asked: “Is the UCP still a pro-Canada party?”

If you have to ask, you already know the answer. @djclimenhaga.bsky.social writes. #abpoli #canpoli #uspoli

What’s happening here is parallel to what’s happening in America: as conservatism moves rightward, its adherents start to realize how many of their policy goals are actually unpopular and increasingly unlikely to win at the ballot box — and so they start exploring ways to opt out.

Net-loss new neighbourhoods mean higher taxes, warns Edmonton councillor New Kettle Lakes neighbourhood structure plan will need tweaking just to be revenue neutral, says O-Day'min coun. Anne Stevenson.

“Effectively, when we approve neighbourhoods that we know operate at a net loss, we are approving future tax increases.”

edmontonjournal.com/news/local-n...

TLDR: If you're against allowing established neighbourhoods to densify faster and with more intensity, here's an alternative way to grow.

Ron Wyden Only Talks Like This When The Spies Do Something *Real* Bad No, I don't know what they did. But I have a lot of experience with the senator

@wyden.senate.gov's record of warning that there is deep and constitutionally-serious dirt being done by the intelligence agencies in secret is unblemished. The vaguer he is, the filthier the dirt is. This is the vaguest I've ever seen him

Canadian Bar Association speaks out against Smith’s judicial appointment demands EDMONTON - The Canadian Bar Association is speaking out against Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's call for more input on the selection of federal judges.

www.thestar.com/news/canada/...

You can buy hard drugs on Facebook I think we’re pretty far past anything that resembles a coherent drug/addiction policy.

Just like always “officer safety concerns” and call it a day.

Exactly

Carney government rejects Danielle Smith’s demand to change how judges are picked Alberta's premier demanded changes before the appointment of three vacant seats on the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta and a Supreme Court vacancy.

Carney government rejects Danielle Smith’s demand to change how judges are picked

Turning up the heat past 11, now Alberta demands to have a say in federally appointed judges.

Alberta separatist says members of Smith's caucus have signed referendum petition EDMONTON — A leader of Alberta's separatist movement says some members of Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party caucus have signed the petition looking to force a vote on the province qui...

"I know of (UCP members of the legislature) that have signed the petition," Jeff Rath, a lawyer for Stay Free Alberta, the group organizing the petition campaign, said Thursday.”

The same day Smith told the country her entire caucus wasnt separatist.

www.villagereport.ca/national-new...

Well they have to pay Microsoft don't they? Or did I miss understand that RPO stuff.

There is an old word to describe going to a foreign power and asking for their assistance in breaking up a sovereign country — it’s treason.

Canadians are standing together in defence of this beautiful land. 🇨🇦

every time i see a white guy in their fifties radicalized by the twitter algorithm into racism and extremism i think about how it's a total failure of the youtube algorithm to instead radicalize him into home brewing, elaborate A/V setups, or DIY solar

BCexit is “I’ve been face down in a mountain of Colombian bang bang my whole career as a Ford dealership owner in Canmore” stuff.

Fire continues to burn hotter regarding the rule of law in Alberta.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The front page of Alberta Courts website is now joint statement by chief justices of all three court levels, proclaiming the importance of judicial independence. albertacourts.ca

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!

ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.