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The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

understandingai.org

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Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#101

Post by mindslight »

dpkirchner wrote: post #94
stronglikedan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DOD *DOW

There is no such thing. That's a fantasy term used by deluded people to signal a particular virtue.

... signal a particular vice. It's vice signalling. We generally think of war as bad and try to avoid it, most especially the people tasked with fighting said wars.

Nothing has changed about the performative-ness, in fact if anything it's gotten more performative and hollow. They just signal vices rather than virtues, so a bunch of rightist-flavored-Lenin's useful idiots think it is fresh or effective or anti-"woke" or at least different.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#102

Post by renewiltord »

jstummbillig wrote: post #59

On the one hand it's fantastic that people are resisting and, if nothing else, raising awareness and buying time. On the other hand, is autonomous war not obviously the endgame, given how quickly capabilities are increasing and that it simply does not require much intelligence (relatively speaking) to build something that points a gun at something and pulls a trigger? It just needs one player to do it, so everyone ha…

That part isn’t actually clear. If China invents autonomous drones instead of us and they fuck it up they’ll kill their people.

Things like Scout AI’s Fury system are human in the loop still and I think for something that could just as well make a mistake and target your own troops it’s not yet clear that full auto is the way to go https://scoutco.ai/

Human in the loop okaying a full auto seems like it could work almost all the way. And then we count on geography. If they want to spray out a bunch of autonomous drones into our territory they do have to fly here to do it first or plant them prior in shipping containers. Better we aim at stopping that.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#103

Post by b112 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #86
mediaman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either of those. Anthropic put a lot of effort into getting FedRAMP approved so the DOD could use them; they are now being punished for that, and the government at present has no other good options. Other options could of course be developed, but other vendors may question how unreliable and untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer.

> untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer. Less than a year left on this clock.

You sure? War with Canada is about to break out, and you can't have elections when at war.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#104

Post by dylan604 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #86
mediaman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either of those. Anthropic put a lot of effort into getting FedRAMP approved so the DOD could use them; they are now being punished for that, and the government at present has no other good options. Other options could of course be developed, but other vendors may question how unreliable and untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer.

> untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer. Less than a year left on this clock.

That seems quite optimistic. Or am I just that pessimistic?

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#105

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32
owenthejumper wrote: post #30

Everything about this situation is absolutely bonkers. Marking a US company as a supply chain risk hasn't been done before AFAIK, and is a guaranteed end of the company. It's the US government basically unilaterally deciding to end a leading AI researcher company. Years of lawsuits will follow, comparisons to "communism", accusations of Trump/Heghseth being Chinese/Russia agents (because well, how else do you hand ov…

> is a guaranteed end of the company Why do you say this?

> is a guaranteed end of the company.

It's trivially untrue. It could be the end of one type of business model, and it could slow their growth, but it could also be a blessing in disguise -- there are a lot of brilliant engineers who would prefer to work with an Anthropic that took a stand on ethics, and a lot of people who would prefer to support such a company. One door closes, another opens. They could become an open, public-facing, benevolent-AI company.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#106

Post by bhelkey »

b112 wrote: post #103
SecretDreams wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer. Less than a year left on this clock.

You sure? War with Canada is about to break out, and you can't have elections when at war.

Is this sarcasm? The US held elections during World War II [1].

[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-...

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#107

Post by b112 »

dpkirchner wrote: post #94
stronglikedan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DOD *DOW

There is no such thing. That's a fantasy term used by deluded people to signal a particular virtue.

I keep seeing DOW everywhere, and honestly had no idea it wasn't a legal namechange yet (or ever).

There's even a webpage for it.

So cut the guy some slack. No one knows wtf is actually going on these days.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#108

Post by gip »

khalic wrote: post #72

I can't believe how many people take the anthropic statement at face value. You need to concentrate on what they are implicitly acknowledging. They will spy on non us citizens. How philanthropic edit: how about the downvoters give a counterargument instead of trying to bury this comment?

The challenge for Americans is: can the political work of defining and protecting our values be outsourced to a company like Anthropic?

Anthropic (and others), whether due to financial/regulatory/competitive, will at some point permit their products to be used for any lawful purpose. Even if they attempt to restrict certain uses today. That arrangement is unlikely to hold.

Americans should vote for the right candidates and elect leaders who will carry and defend their views. I don't think there is any other way.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#109

Post by api »

Eggpants wrote: post #52

What’s interesting is Anthropic being singled out here. That either means: 1- OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc have no problem with their products being used to kill people so no need to bully them. 2- These other products are so terrible at the task that the clown shoe wearing SecDef is forced to try to bully Anthropic.

3- These others have more influence with the administration and are using it to bully a competitor?

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#110

Post by vharuck »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #84
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "DoW". Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, are named by Congress. Just because the current administration wants to use a different name means nothing ... unless everyone just complies in advance. Will Congress actually rename it? Hard to say, but it doesn't seem very likely.

> There is no "DoW". There’s no Obamacare either. Come on, this is about as pedantic as the “the DoD is not the Pentagon” debate downthread. It’s a colloquial name, and how the executive branch wants everyone to refer to it. This forum isn’t an official document. Move on.

If the title doesn't make a difference, then there's no point to insist on it. People say "the Pentagon" as shorthand for "military leadership in Washington." Not using the shorter term wouldn't do much beyond making news articles longer.

This administration says "Department of War" because they want to project an aggressive image. I support anyone who uses the legal name "Department of Defense" in an effort to reinforce an aspirational goal for the department and to remind others that the Executive Branch shouldn't be allowed to remake the entire government at will.

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