Split Personas in AI ... Companies

Anthropic's legal/governance team recently sent a pretty deceptive message to a US representative. They also deliberately superseded their own RSP with a weaker set of commitments. This is despite some of their top research staff being against that messaging, and being very much in favour of the RSP (old link, it is possible that Evan has changed his mind since).

OpenAI's Jakub Pachocki has written an OpenaAI-official piece about how he believes that regulation may be necessary and we ought to slow down. While OpenAI's leadership puts a lot of effort into putting down any politician who suggests this^[1].

It seems like OpenAI and Anthropic contain individuals who are thinking carefully about risks and want to see policies to reduce them, as well as individuals who are trying to do normal power-grabbing things for the company by minimizing regulation and oversight.

In one situation (long-form blogposts) we elicit the thoughtful perhaps-we-should-slow-down persona, and in another situation (actual policy lobbying and interactions with the state) we elicit the power-maximizing oversight-minimizing persona.

1. ^{^}

   I don't have a specific direct source for this claim, but I believe it is well-understood to be true in LW circles. Greg Brockman has certainly funded the Anti-AI-regulation super-pac Leading The Future