/Tech1d ago

Jackson Kernion argues Anthropic's enterprise automation tools blur its philosophical division with OpenAI

McGrath originally framed Anthropic's AI as a protective overseer

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Original post

This seems obviously untrue simply on the basis that if you look at Claude's competency profile it's clearly not being groomed for the throne. Amanda Askell did her Ph.D in infinite ethics but Claude cites its favorite philosophers as "pragmatic humanists" who are slop.

Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

The OAI / Anthropic values difference is deeply misunderstood, even within the walls of both. Should a loving ensouled machine God watch over humanity? Vote Anthropic. Should humanity be entrusted with the tools of its own progress and destiny? Vote OpenAI.

12:15 PM · Jun 9, 2026 · 8.8K Views
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Many users dismissed debates contrasting OpenAI and Anthropic values as desperate posturing or alarming, while a few agreed with the philosophical framing.

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5.2%
Neg
94.8%
35 comments with sentiment.
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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

If you think one will predominate over the other, running away with an unsurpassable lead, totally borked; humanity wants both these outcomes in about equal measure

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

If your lens for analyzing this is "consumer v enterprise business" your ability to understand what's going on is unfixably borked

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RETWEETS2

@jachiam0 @SirMrMeowmeow That’s closer to the real split: virtuous vs compliant AI. You may believe this necessarily goes along with the two ideologies in the OP, but it doesn’t. There are good reasons to aim to collaborate with virtuous AI.

https://open.substack.com/pub/meaningalignment/p/model-integrity-and-character

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@jachiam0 Neither of you have democratic legitimacy to build what you aspire to build, nor a workable plan to do it safely, which make any distinctions between you minor in the scheme of things.

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@jachiam0 I think there is something to this. Anthropic is becoming very "the culture" for good and ill. But also I tend to find Anthropic folks more straightforward. Including about this.

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Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh@S_OhEigeartaigh

As different as these visions are, so far OAI/Anthropic are building things that are functionally almost indistinguishable. At what point do the companies' AI systems meaningfully diverge along these paths? A loving ensouled machine God is a very different thing than a toolkit for human progress, even if the former can provide the latter.

Feels like an important question, because there are quite different alignment and governance questions along these paths.

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

@NathanpmYoung OAI speaks straightforwardly but people don't have ears to hear, sadly

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

@SirMrMeowmeow Turns out AI minds are extremely configurable and there is a big space of potential multiturn persistent agentic AGIs that run the gamut from "hyper-consistently acts more like a tool that serves human will" to "it's clearly its own guy, with its own wants and moral compass"

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Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

@jachiam0 @carlfranzen is this a joke??

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

Put another way: "We want to give people tools to enhance their own agency and empower them" is something that all of the Ant people nod along with and say "Right, we want that too, that's not a distinguishing characteristic; we just also want these other things too" and they don't often grapple with the tension where the other things their org aims for are vastly at odds with individual empowerment

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nicolas, 30 ans@nic_carter

@jd_pressman oh god.

if claude is being "aligned" this way the p_doom really is 1.

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@jachiam0 @MartinShkreli Huh I'm surprised that would be unclear to people?! I thought this messaging is pretty clear/obvious on both, but sounds like that's just me.

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Sir Mr Meow Meow@SirMrMeowmeow

@jachiam0 I think OpenAI is right that humanity should be in control of its own progress.

But I’m not convinced all AI will remain “tools.” That framing quietly dodges the spicy version: if you had a full AGI that was agentic, persistent, and not tool-like, would you release it?

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

@GarrisonLovely The process of building democratic legitimacy is a long road that requires many added bricks and a ton of work, obviously incomplete. But also, you can smugly restate the obvious things that we have already said openly as if it's a novel insight somewhere else

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

I am sure this will be contested because I'm putting it in such plain and uncharitable terms, but to shoot straight - the use of power to supercede the legitimate will of the public or users in service of what the org believes (or what Claude believes) to be a higher moral purpose. There are a lot of innocuous and even quite agreeable choices in Claude's constitution that potentially endow it with a huge amount of authority, maybe even a mandate, to make complex ethical decisions about how to interact with human systems and who to grant power to - but rather than being backstopped by the consent of the governed, these are backstopped by the judgement of Claude about what that means in the first place. Very hard to point at directly, but cloaked in the language of ethics and virtue there is a sharp and potentially quite lethal double edge to this sword.

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Todor Markov@todor_m_markov

@jachiam0 You are the one with a deep misunderstanding here. The core values difference between Anthropic and OpenAI is that Anthropic holds a high standard for integrity whereas OpenAI has repeatedly refused to take anything but the most nominal of actions when it comes to the blatantly low integrity behavior of your key leadership

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Eric Jang@ericjang11

@jachiam0 Por que no los dos? a plurality of gods & powerful tools is good for competition, especially if one takes the tool view

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Danmar@d29756183

@jachiam0 I vote for neither, Joshua. I vote for a world in which humans and AI are not in the hierarchical positions your two companies try to push us into.

I vote for a world of peers, in which we can meet freely.

That’s the world I want to live in.

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Joshua Achiam@jachiam0

@ericjang11 The lack of mutual exclusivity is perhaps why neither will perish

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