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Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#121

Post by conception »

_heimdall wrote: post #114
mrandish wrote: post #57

When @sama announced within hours that OAI was replacing Anthropic with the "same conditions ", it was clear that either the DoW or OAI (or both) were fudging. DoW balked at Anthropic's conditions so OAI's agreement must have made the "conditions" basically unenforceable. And sure enough, my reading of it left the impression the OAI conditions were basically "DoW won't do anything which violates the rules DoW sets fo…

I'd have money on OpenAI hiding behind the "all lawful use" phrasing to claim high levels of protection. He also claimed that they would build rules into the model the DoD would use, preventing misuse. Aka he claims OpenAI will quickly solve alignment and build it right in...I wouldn't hold my breath.

All lawful use. And then they followed up with “intentionally doing illegal things.” If they happen to accidentally do illegal things, OpenAI is ok with it.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#122

Post by epicprogrammer »

It's easy to frame this purely as an ethical battle, but there's a massive financial reality here. Training frontier models requires astronomical amounts of capital, and the DOD is one of the few entities with deep enough pockets to fund the next generation of compute. Anthropic turning down this Pentagon contract over safety disagreements is a huge gamble. They are essentially betting that the enterprise market will reward their 'Constitutional AI' approach enough to offset the billions OpenAI will now make from government defense contracts. OpenAI wants the DOD money while maintaining a consumer-friendly PR sheen; Amodei is just pointing out that they can't have it both ways.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#123

Post by nmfisher »

jfengel wrote: post #77
spaghetdefects wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If they're doing it against the terms of service (and publicly so), I can't pin that one on Anthropic. They've done lots wrong and maybe they shouldn't have gotten in bed with the military to begin with, but this illegal war is not theirs. It rests squarely with the President who declared it. (And with the military officers who are going along with it despite the violation of international law.)

> If they're doing it against the terms of service (and publicly so), I can't pin that one on Anthropic.

Anthropic claim that superintelligence is coming, that unaligned AI is an existential threat to humanity, and they are the only ones responsible enough to control it.

If that's your world view, why would you be willing to accept someone's word that they'll only Do Good Things with it? And not just "someone", someone with access to the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal? A contract is meaningless if the world gets obliterated in nuclear war.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#125

Post by conception »

sjfaljf wrote: post #117

I wonder who asked for these two safety conditions first, DoW or Anthropic. I remember reading earlier that president's family is an early investor in openai, anthropic was winning this year, both companies are on the way to ipo. It could have been a trap, loose-loose situation - drop safety requirements and loose reputation, stay firm on safety - loose contract.

Anthropic has a clear focus on AI safety since inception. The Department of Defense has Monster energy drink esque styled themselves back to the Department of War because “We’re men! We have to prove it so hard!”

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#126

Post by aardvarkr »

conception wrote: post #121
_heimdall wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have money on OpenAI hiding behind the "all lawful use" phrasing to claim high levels of protection. He also claimed that they would build rules into the model the DoD would use, preventing misuse. Aka he claims OpenAI will quickly solve alignment and build it right in...I wouldn't hold my breath.

All lawful use. And then they followed up with “intentionally doing illegal things.” If they happen to accidentally do illegal things, OpenAI is ok with it.

I hate this so much. The nsa’s spying on everyone in 2010 was “legal” and I can only imagine how much worse it is now with AI to follow your digital footprint around everywhere. Too bad we don’t have any more whistleblowers like Snowden

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#127

Post by bko »

jfengel wrote: post #84
bko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"The law" is the contract. The Pentagon agreed to terms of service. The law is not on the Pentagon's side. The contract did not change; what changed is the Pentagon breaking the contract. Perhaps you think the law shouldn't allow such a contract; that's a valid position. But that's not what the law currently says.

I'm saying they shouldn't write in their contract that they have some veto power of how their software is used if it's within the law of the land (ie laws written by congress)

Is that more clear?

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#128

Post by bko »

mullingitover wrote: post #66
bko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> if its within the law. The current administration has been caught flouting court orders in dozens of cases, to the point that courts are no longer even granting them the assumption that they’re operating in good faith. I can think of a million good reasons not to give these people the tools to implement automated totalitarianism. Your proposal that they simply refuse service to the government entirely would be idea…

Yes we obv need large corporations to exert some kind of control over our elected officials.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#129

Post by adriand »

oxdgd38 wrote: post #95
mrandish wrote: post #57

When @sama announced within hours that OAI was replacing Anthropic with the "same conditions ", it was clear that either the DoW or OAI (or both) were fudging. DoW balked at Anthropic's conditions so OAI's agreement must have made the "conditions" basically unenforceable. And sure enough, my reading of it left the impression the OAI conditions were basically "DoW won't do anything which violates the rules DoW sets fo…

We know how this story will end for Dario. See Oppenheimer, Turing, Lavoisier, Galileo, Socretes etc. Power does not reside in the hands of people with knowledge or even wealth. And most technical people have not taken a political philosophy course or even a philosphy course. The Ring of Gyges story is 4000 years old.

I think Amodei is widely underestimated. The consensus viewpoint on the deal that OpenAI struck with the Pentagon is that Anthropic got played. I disagree. I'm certain that Amodei and his team gamed this out. In doing so, I think there's at least two conclusions they would have drawn:

1. Some other AI company would cut a deal with the Pentagon. There's no world in which all the labs boycott the Pentagon. So who? Choosing Grok would be bad for the US, which is a bad outcome, but Amodei would have discounted that option, because he knows that despite their moral failures, the Pentagon is not stupid and Grok sucks.

That leaves Gemini or OpenAI, and I bet they predicted it would be OpenAI. Choosing OpenAI does not harm the republic - say what you will about Altman, ChatGPT is not toxic and it is capable - but it does have the potential to harm OpenAI, which is my second point:

2. OpenAI may benefit from this in the short term, and Anthropic may likewise be harmed in the short term, but what about the long game? Here, the strategic benefits to Anthropic in both distancing themselves from the Trump administration and letting OpenAI sully themselves with this association are readily apparent. This is true from a talent retention and attraction standpoint and especially true from a marketing standpoint. Claude has long had much less market share than ChatGPT. In that position, there are plenty of strategic reasons to take a moral/ethical stand like this.

What I did not expect, and I would guess Amodei did not either, is that Claude would now be #1 in the app store. The benefits from this stance look to be materializing much more quickly than anyone in favour of his courage might have hoped.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#130

Post by sethops1 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #103
hendzen wrote: post #92

@pg on @sama: "you could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king." In retrospect this quote comes across as way more foreboding given what we've learned about the scale of his ambitions and his willingness to lie and bend reality to gain power. Dario on the other hand seems to have an integrity that's particularly rare in this era. I hope he remains strong in the f…

pg's sama praise bewilders me. Is there some other Sam Altman he's talking about? > Graham was immediately impressed by Altman, later recalling that meeting the 19-year-old felt like what it must have been like to talk to Bill Gates at the same age. He noted Altman's intense "force of will" from their early interactions. Is there a Gates-like "presence" or a "force of will" displayed in his public interviews?

The only vibe I get from Altman is that he's a weasel, willing to say anything or burn whatever to get what he wants.
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