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OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

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Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#331

Post by tavavex »

Trapais wrote: post #324
tavavex wrote: post #254

I'm confused - what exactly does the Pentagon have to gain from OpenAI's products? Their front-runners are an LLM and an image generator, and I'm not sure what large-scale use case the US Department of Defense can have for either of these.

Propaganda. DoD already uses hollywood for propaganda: say nice things about Uncle Sam, let America save the day once again, and Uncle Sam will let you play with his toys. Now they have access to tool that can write very smart comments. If you think propagandists will not use SoTA LLM for propaganda, either you are fool or they are(They probably did it already anyway). General writing. Want to implement a new rule? A…

A lot of these look like very big stretches. Most of the things you've listed are either already being done by humans or is something that an LLM simply can't improve upon. Even if you had the best writers and most complex AI in the world, you can't really sugarcoat a gas chamber past a certain point.

Fake writings and fake imagery are already easily created by humans, but as far as I know, it's not practiced widely because it's known that you can't easily trust wild claims if it's not backed by real people. Digital image editing opened up the doors to creating any type of misleading imagery, but nothing has really changed since then.

And I have no idea how any of the "all IPs from Russia" or "scan everything on the internet" could even work. If the US government has infrastructure that can scan for this kind of info, they don't need AI to use it. If they don't, well.. an LLM isn't gonna magically make every bit of internet traffic accessible to them.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#332

Post by amrocha »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #323
amrocha wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US backed Guaido's illegitimate claim to Venezuelan presidency as recently as 2022. You're right that it wasn't outright military interventionism. In my mind, there's little difference between supporting a coup covertly through the CIA, by providing weapons and training, and invading a country. Maybe we disagree there.

> between supporting a coup covertly through the CIA, by providing weapons and training, Oh, and where did this happen?

Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolívia, Cuba off the top of my head. Feel free to look up a complete list if you want to.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#333

Post by dr_kiszonka »

justinclift wrote: post #84
hahnchen wrote: post #5

Important to know: > Anna Makanju, the company’s vice president of global affairs ... added that it will retain its ban on developing weapons

> developing weapons "To improve our response to emerging threats, our SmartMissiles™ now use OpenAI for fire/don't-fire decisions instead of a human operator."

I think you are pretty close. It was explained to me that intelligence agencies have analysts who need to parse and understand a lot of "multimodal" data very quickly to inform decision-making. Maybe the thinking is that LLMs could help with it? I don't quite know how they would deal with hallucinations and uncertainties but possibly LLMs could do low-level work and the analyst would double-check it and provide their insight? Let's call it "LLM-facilitated human-in-the-loop intelligence synthesis and augmentation" :)

Disclaimer: I don't work on LLMs or NLP and not for any agencies, so I am likely dead-wrong here.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#334

Post by amrocha »

mopsi wrote: post #318
amrocha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy, I'm from South America and I had to learn English and move away from my continent in order to have a chance at a good life. I've already been colonized by the USA. Don't tell me to be thankful because Russian would have been worse.

Nowhere did I tell you to be thankful. But I do find it hypocritical how oblivious and dismissive you are of the similar suffering caused by other countries, in even wider scale, over a longer time, in other parts of the world.

You're literally dismissing the fact that the USA executed a coup in my country because I didn't acknowledge that it would be bad if Russia did the same thing.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#335

Post by farhanhubble »

amrocha wrote: post #129
andrewstuart wrote: post #116

I was brought up in a household that was anti military. Only as an adult was I able to form my own opinion. Without a strong military in the past we would certainly not be here today and without a strong military now, who knows what other nation might decide to attack our sovereignty. It's childish to be anti military - it shows you do not understand the interconnectedness of our society - good and bad.

I could make literally the opposite argument. Other countries antagonize the US because of its military interventionism. If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. It's childish to be pro military. It shows you think arbitrary lines on a map determine who's good or bad.

That's not how humans and nations behave. If you are nice you'll be eaten alive.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#336

Post by kridsdale1 »

maxglute wrote: post #280
janalsncm wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say why it was downvoted but I can say it’s a highly unlikely scenario. You typically need a security clearance to view classified info. Further, many employees at OpenAI may not even be US citizens, and even if they are, many others aren’t super enthusiastic about giving the Pentagon new toys to use.

OpenAI had/has 57 Chinese talent [1], they're probably getting the boot if OpenAI picks up Pentagon contracts. https://macropolo2.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

That would be a great loss of talent. I wish we could make it much easier for those top scientists to become American citizens.

Why assume they have loyalty to the CCP? They’re in California, presumably they like hot dogs, monster trucks, and bikinis.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#337

Post by kridsdale1 »

hackernewds wrote: post #328
ilikehurdles wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why we should object to equipping our defenses with more advanced technology than those of our adversaries. Maybe forcing vague principles down a company’s throat by a board of uninvolved non-builder types isn’t a strategy for successful internal cultural alignment. The peanut gallery’s objections don’t matter.

sounds like nuclear proliferation?

Better to proliferate than let a maniacal despot with a monthly habit of declaring his intent to enslave a thriving liberal democracy from being the only one with power.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#338

Post by justinclift »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #333
justinclift wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing weapons "To improve our response to emerging threats, our SmartMissiles™ now use OpenAI for fire/don't-fire decisions instead of a human operator."

I think you are pretty close. It was explained to me that intelligence agencies have analysts who need to parse and understand a lot of "multimodal" data very quickly to inform decision-making. Maybe the thinking is that LLMs could help with it? I don't quite know how they would deal with hallucinations and uncertainties but possibly LLMs could do low-level work and the analyst would double-check it and provide their…

> analyst would double-check it

Except sometimes they won't, and it'll turn out to be hallucinated info. :(

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#339

Post by kridsdale1 »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #320
d--b wrote: post #198

Ok so a few weeks ago, virtually every OpenAi employee signed a letter saying “reinstate Altman or I quit”. Is any OpenAi employee wanting to sign a “don’t use OpenAi for war or I quit”? Or was everyone in on betraying all OpenAi’s founding principles from the start?

Those deals are not made in one week. Maybe this agreement with the Pentagon has something to do with the drama of a couple of months ago.

That sounds very likely. The ideological purists of the old board would have acted exactly as they did if they learned about this deal at that time.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#340

Post by kridsdale1 »

d--b wrote: post #243
dmitrygr wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think he was ever deluding himself. This was always the end goal. The fact that people fell for the lies, well, everyone in Silicon Valley eventually learns not to trust anybody whose title is CEO. The lesson is usually painful. But memorable.

Don’t know. His orb/ubs thing is so naive. It looks like he truly believes in SV’s ability to “make the world a better place”.

The world is a better place now. Have you SEEN vr porn? Holy gods.
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