Anthropic's '5% of shares' public benefit fund draws pushback a month on: "a PR move to write the rules itself?"

Anthropic's Public Benefit Fund, announced last month, is drawing doubts in the Canadian press over whether it would actually help workers displaced by AI.

According to Canada's The Globe and Mail on Nov. 9, Anthropic said on Oct. 18 it would commit 5% of its shares to the fund. The plan is subject to shareholder approval, and the board can add another 2% each time the company's value grows by 50%. Anthropic said AI could create enormous economic value but also instability for workers, and that the money would go to people affected by AI rather than to executive pay. It said it would share who runs the fund and what it will support in the coming months.

The criticism centers on missing detail. "The idea proposed by Anthropic is very conceptual, without a lot of detail," said Rafael Gomez, director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources. "It is pre-empting any kind of government regulation by defining the regulation as they want it." McGill's Barry Eidlin called it "a public-relations exercise" aimed at controlling how regulation is crafted. The Globe also noted Anthropic's own data shows junior technical hiring dropped sharply last year. Anthropic did not respond to the criticism.

Others read it differently. C.D. Howe economist Rosalie Wyonch said both Anthropic and OpenAI are public benefit corporations with a duty to deliver social benefit, so a fund signals that commitment to investors. The OpenAI Foundation pledged $250 million for workers in May and has distributed $50 million. The Globe disclosed that it belongs to news-publisher coalitions suing Anthropic and OpenAI over copyright.