591–600 of 1001 posts
But mass surveillance of Australians or Danes is alligned with democratic values as long as it's the Americans doing it?
I don't think the moral high ground Anthropic is taking here is high enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all, there's no such thing as "Department of War". A department name change is legal/binding only after it's approved by the Senate. Senator Kelly is still calling it DoD (Department of Defense). > Mass domestic surveillance. Since when has DoD started getting involved with the internal affairs of the country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...
It's whatever what the people who have the power want to call it. What is written on a piece of paper is irrelevant if it is not acted upon. If the rename gets struck down then they don't have the power. If it doesn't they have the power. There are many dictatorships that built their power in the face of people claiming that they can't do what they planned because it was illegal. Until they did it anyway.
I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…
I'm glad I'm not alone in finding the specific emphasis on drawing the line at domestic surveillance a bit odd. Later they also state they are against "provid[ing] a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk" (emphasis mine). Either way I'm glad they have lines at all, but it doesn't come across as particularly reassuring for people in places the US targets (wedding hosts and guests for example).
When Google Met Wikileaks is a fun read, billionaire CEOs love to take Americas side.
All of these problems are downstream of the Congress having thoroughly abdicated its powers to the executive. The military should be reigned in at the legislative level, by constraining what it can and cannot do under law. Popular action is the only way to make that happen. Energy directed anywhere else is a waste. Private corporations should never be allowed to dictate how the military acts. Such a thought would be…
> The technology can just be requisitioned During a war with national mobilization, that would make sense. Or in a country like China. This kind of coercion is not an expected part of democratic rule.
give yourself a break. what your fancy democratic rule still holds under Trump?
I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…
This is such a depressing read. What is becoming of the USA? Let's hope sanity prevails and the next election cycle can bring in some competent non-grievance based leadership.
You mean, what's been happening to the USA? this isn't a new trend. Militarization of police, open attacks on democracy, unilateral foreign policy moves. the country jumped the shark post 9/11 and has been on a slow rot since then.
After the standing up for democracy. This is my favorite part. "Your reasoning is deficient. Dismissed."
"In an ideal world, I'd want xAI to emulate the maturity Anthropic showed here: affirm willingness to help defend democracies (including via classified/intel/defense tools), sacrifice short-term revenue if needed to block adversarial access, but stand firm on refusing to enable the most civilizationally corrosive misuses when the tech simply isn't ready or the societal cost is too high. Saying "no" to powerful customers—even the DoD—when the ask undermines core principles is hard, but it's the kind of spine that builds long-term trust and credibility."
It also acknowledged that this is not what is happening...
I was concerned originally when I heard that Anthropic, who often professed to being the "good guy" AI company who would always prioritize human welfare, opted to sell priority access to their models to the Pentagon in the first place. The devil's advocate position in their favor I imagine would be that they believe some AI lab would inevitably be the one to serve the military industrial complex, and overall it's bet…
One of the most challenging problems in AI safety re/ x-risk is that even if you can get one country to do the right thing, getting multiple countries on board is an entirely different ballgame. Some amount of intentional coercion is inevitable.
On the low end, you could pay bounties to international bounty hunters who extract foreign AI researchers in a manner similar to an FBI's most wanted lost, and let AI researchers quickly do the math and realize there are a million other well paid jobs that don't come with this flight risk. On the high end you can go to war and kill everyone. Whatever gets the job done.
Either way, if you want to win at enforcing a new kind of international coercion, you need to be at the top of the pack militarily and economically speaking. That is the true goal here, and I don't think one can make coherent sense out of what Anthropic is doing without keeping that in the back of their mind at all times.
I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…