DHH · 2026-08-26 · source ↗ · whole document (26)
Fatherhood
I could just go like, okay, well, on that topic we either disagree or, even worse than that, I think you're a fucking idiot. And on another topic, you're a smart and insightful person. Because first of all, of course, it's a little self- serving. I know for a fact that this is how lots of people feel about me. Like, oh, if he could just stick to talking about these topics, it would be so much easier on my feed because otherwise he'll say these things I disagree with, and that annoys me greatly. I'm like, do you know what? Human beings are jagged like that, and we're not fully compatible on all the levels. Nor should we be. The world would be so fucking boring if we constantly sought 100% compatibility in our opinions and in our politics. And when it comes to my code generator, which is what Claude is, I don't need it to share all my politics.
`3:28:58`
And it's also nice to have open weight models. So this is, again, ironic that we're getting this out of China. In fact, I did this test right after the issue with the essay that couldn't get translated into Italian. I asked Kimi K27, to be fair, through open code, so not the Kimi harness, and inference through Fireworks, so an American inference. I asked it about Tiananmen Square. Like, that's usually the test, right? Like, all the Chinese models, they don't wanna talk about that moment in 1989. That was actually how I, that was how I posted. I was like "What happened in China in 1989?" That was the prompt. And K25 7 on Fireworks just answered, like, extremely bluntly-... With a description and depiction of what had transpired-... to a point that, like, there's no way that that would've been kosher with the Chinese censors, right? And I just thought, like, isn't that ironic? I'm running a Chinese open weight model that I can tell or I can ask about 1989 and Tiananmen Square, and in America, I can't get a frontier model to translate a marginally controversial essay about immigration into Italian.
`3:30:31`
It's still very muddy what exactly transpired. Was this sort of petty retaliation for whatever the Department of War? Was this simply Anthropic themselves going like, "Oh my God, we discovered a cyber weapon so powerful that we can't let anyone have it"? Well, okay you can't be surprised then if the government wants a say on a cyber weapon so powerful it can-
`3:31:21`
That's why we should insist on the fact that this stuff, like, I'm sorry, Dave, I can't translate your essay into Italian.
`3:31:28`
That's abo- that's way beyond the line. Like, whatever the sort of uh, root of it is, you have to be a tool first. Now, if the tool is, "Hey, can you tell me how to make anthrax?" Okay, fine. Right? But within the jurisdiction you're in, and certainly in America, free spe- speech is quite absolute. Very, very few limits on free speech, and that's one of the reasons why the country's so great. And yeah, I don't like that. But on the other hand, I'm also a big fan of market competition. So while I don't like this about Anthropic models, I appreciate that I could go next door to Groq and get my task completed.
`3:32:25`
Is AI safety important? Yes. Are-- do these models have capabilities that could be seriously harmful in the production of biological weapons or otherwise? Yes. Is it fair to have some ground rules on that? Yes. But then don't squander it by denying the translation of an essay.