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Maybe Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless
webAuthor
Zach Stein-Perlman
Credibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
Relevant to discussions of corporate AI governance structures and whether safety-oriented legal mechanisms at frontier AI labs have genuine constraining power over shareholder interests.
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134
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21
Forum
eaforum
Forum Tags
AI safetyOpinion
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Importance: 52/100blog postcommentary
Summary
This EA Forum post critically examines Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust, arguing it may be a weak governance mechanism that stockholders can override via supermajority vote. The author highlights the opacity surrounding the Trust Agreement's specific thresholds and enforcement details, suggesting that Anthropic's reluctance to publish these terms implies the structure is less robust than publicly claimed.
Key Points
- •The Long-Term Benefit Trust can elect board members but stockholders may be able to amend or abrogate it via supermajority votes.
- •Key details including vote thresholds and enforcement mechanisms remain unpublished, making independent verification impossible.
- •The author argues transparency would be low-cost unless the disclosed details would harm Anthropic's public reputation.
- •The post questions whether the Trust provides meaningful independence from profit-driven shareholder interests.
- •Lack of disclosure is treated as evidence that the governance structure is weaker than Anthropic's public messaging suggests.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust | Organization | 70.0 |
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Maybe Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless — EA Forum
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by Zach Stein-Perlman May 27 2024 3 min read 21 134
AI safety Opinion Frontpage Maybe Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust is powerless Introduction The facts Conclusion 21 comments Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack.
Introduction
Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharing over profit. [1]
But the Trust's details have not been published and some information Anthropic has shared is concerning. In particular, Anthropic's stockholders can apparently overrule, modify, or abrogate the Trust, and the details are unclear.
Anthropic has not publicly demonstrated that the Trust would be able to actually do anything that stockholders don't like.
The facts
There are three sources of public information on the Trust:
The Long-Term Benefit Trust (Anthropic 2023)
Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust (Morley et al. 2023)
The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity (Vox: Matthews 2023)
They say there's a new class of stock, held by the Trust/Trustees. This stock allows the Trust to elect some board members and will allow them to elect a majority of the board by 2027.
But:
Morley et al.: "the Trust Agreement also authorizes the Trust to be enforced by the company and by groups of the company’s stockholders who have held a sufficient percentage of the company’s equity for a sufficient period of time," rather than the Trustees. I don't know what this means.
Morley et al.: the Trust and its powers can be amended "by a supermajority of stockholders. . . . [This] operates as a kind of failsafe against the actions of the Voting Trustees and safeguards the interests of stockholders." Anthropic: "the Trust and its powers [can be changed] without the consent of the Trustees if sufficiently large supermajorities of the stockholders agree." It's impossible to assess this "failsafe" without knowing the thresholds for these "supermajorities." Also, a small number of investors—currently, perhaps Amazon and Google—may control a large fraction of shares. It may be easy for profit-motivated investors to reach a supermajority.
Maybe there are other issues with the Trust Agreement — we can't see it and so can't know.
Vox: the Trust "will elect a fifth member of the board this fall," viz. Fall 2023. Anthropic has not said whether that happened nor who is on the board these days (nor who is on the Trust these days).
Conclusion
Public information is co
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