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Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

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Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#621
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you agree with how US laws are drafted, this administration has no logical foundation for anything it does which is a massively different and worse problem by orders of magnitude. This administration runs on whims. This is horrifying and there is real harm in this we have yet to see the full repercussions of.

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I'm not sure how to weigh the previous administrations war on crypto and the current ones complete embracing of it. Not only does the president literally have his own cryptocurrency, they're trying hard to create a digital dollar based on crypto and likely amounting to public bank accounts directly with the federal reserve.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#622
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you agree with how US laws are drafted, this administration has no logical foundation for anything it does which is a massively different and worse problem by orders of magnitude. This administration runs on whims. This is horrifying and there is real harm in this we have yet to see the full repercussions of.

This administration has been slapped back by the courts more then I would have expected though. If we had fewer laws granting pretty broad powers to the executive branch I have to assume more of the administration's actions would be stopped.

It just means that the entire system has not been captured by insane people that there is still some pushback.

Anyone who believes in the Unitary Executive Theory likely believes that the President wears imperial robes. The idea that the President should have unchecked power over the executive branch is insane and mocks the whole idea of coequal branches of government or checks and balances.

You can argue for reform, but nothing currently going on is reform. It is entirely running on fumes. The recent AI executive order is representative of this as is the constantly shifting policy driven by whoever has Trump’s favor at any point in time. There's nothing grounding any recent policy change of the United States.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not constructive when you only want to strap gov. powers. The resulting void is ripe for the private sector to capture. To counter this, you need capable public institutions, so a constructive approach would mean, more precise regulations with balanced liberties and bureaucratic aid, not plain less of it. (IMO, this general rejection without a propper problem description nor solution is a product of corporate…

Its worth noting that I'm specifically talking about federal powers in the US here. I have a lower bar for state and local governments. The whole point of that system is to allow states to try different approaches and policies, if enough states agree on similar approaches maybe it can be pulled up to the federal level. In the case of the Trump administration, this thread didn't have specific policies people took issu…

> this thread didn’t have specific policies people took issue with

Can you give me a consistent principal that that the government of the day is doing outside of flopping around screaming America First while shooting itself in the foot while harassing citizens and critics it deems undesirable? Meanwhile Trump preens about like a pig prancing in front of a mirror and everyone is too weak to publicly acknowledge the farce we have all helped facilitate.

- The immigration policy is nonsensical, incoherent and basically driven by, “I don’t like others”. If it were consistent we would have proper review processes. A respected Somali FIFA referee would not be banned from the US for reasons that apparently cannot be disclosed.

- The AI policy is just based on whatever exec has the right person’s ear as demonstrated by the export controls being enforced on Anthropic’s recent models entirely due to Andy Jassy talking to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

- Onshoring jobs has not moved in any meaningful manner, there is no evidence of this outside of Trump screaming about unproductive and illegal tariffs which he continues to try and argue are not the consumer tax that they are.

- Deconstructing science and practical field work has caused a humanitarian and supply chain disaster. Pest prevention programs are in chaotic states, diseases that the US helped limit worldwide are on the rise, and we have destabilized multiple regions where we used to provide food security which also helped prop up American agriculture.

- There is no crypto policy in the United States. Crypto businesses have spent money trying to stop this. What does crypto actually facilitate? The central bank wasn't created just to annoy people or impede their ability to profit. Should we go back to JP Morgan locking bankers in his personal library and berating them until they agreed to start lending money again?

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#624
post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its worth noting that I'm specifically talking about federal powers in the US here. I have a lower bar for state and local governments. The whole point of that system is to allow states to try different approaches and policies, if enough states agree on similar approaches maybe it can be pulled up to the federal level. In the case of the Trump administration, this thread didn't have specific policies people took issu…

> this thread didn’t have specific policies people took issue with Can you give me a consistent principal that that the government of the day is doing outside of flopping around screaming America First while shooting itself in the foot while harassing citizens and critics it deems undesirable? Meanwhile Trump preens about like a pig prancing in front of a mirror and everyone is too weak to publicly acknowledge the fa…

Well I'm definitely not one to justify what the current administration is doing, maybe someone else coming by could try to help make that case.

I largely agree with your criticisms of them. Where I expect we differ is that I would rather remove powers currently granted to them rather than see further federal powers created.

For example, I don't want to see a crypto policy in the US and I'm not aware of what problem it would be solving. If people want to gamble on crypto that's their choice. If they get taken by rug pulls and scams, well that is the result of decisions they made. What I don't want is an ethos expecting the government to know what is best for everyone and force rules upon us because they believe we won't make good decisions and can't or won't be responsible for the outcomes.

Edit: I missed the very end of your comment. No, I don't think we should empower banks to imprison individuals based on unpaid debts. That's already covered though, it isn't legal for a corporation or and individual to imprison a person. Why would we be reverting to such a world?

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#625
post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This administration has been slapped back by the courts more then I would have expected though. If we had fewer laws granting pretty broad powers to the executive branch I have to assume more of the administration's actions would be stopped.

It just means that the entire system has not been captured by insane people that there is still some pushback. Anyone who believes in the Unitary Executive Theory likely believes that the President wears imperial robes. The idea that the President should have unchecked power over the executive branch is insane and mocks the whole idea of coequal branches of government or checks and balances. You can argue for reform,…

I agree with you mostly, but that's beside my point. Some of the things the administration is doing fall under existing executive powers granted by congress, either directly or in enough gray area that it would require court challenges. Removing laws granting those powers should lead to either the administration avoiding the attempt if they know they'll lose in court or courts having a very simple case to deem said actions illegal.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#626
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you agree with how US laws are drafted, this administration has no logical foundation for anything it does which is a massively different and worse problem by orders of magnitude. This administration runs on whims. This is horrifying and there is real harm in this we have yet to see the full repercussions of.

The lack of a logical foundation isn't the novelty. The whole system has run on whims and backfilled reasoning for a long time. That's the problem . If it had always been the rule of law until now then we would have an apparatus set up to impose checks and balances and accountability on government officials, but because those things have so atrophied from continuous contempt and neglect, no one knows how to demonstra…

While I agree as implemented today our system of checks and balances is faltering, those systems do exist. Separation of powers and our three branch system was designed precisely to try and force checks on power.

It may be failing, but the problem isn't that those systems weren't put in place.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is perfectly fine with the US government using Claude to commit war crimes. The US military has done hundreds of extra-judicial killings in the waters around South America over the last year and Anthropic hasn't had anything to say about that.

Use nuance and judgement, friend. Anthropic notably pushed back on completely autonomous no-human-in-the-loop drone killings and mass surveillance of the US population, where others like OpenAI scrambled to agree. Anthropic isn't perfect but that doesn't make them equally bad.

I didn't say or even imply that OpenAI and Anthropic are equally bad on this front. It's just not accurate to say Anthropic has issues with the US military using Claude to commit war crimes. They don't.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real question; what are we supposed to do about that information delay when it directly enables corruption and usury? This is an ongoing issue with historical precedent; the repeal of glass-steagall, MKULTRA and COINTELPRO, Iran-contra, watergate, the list is indefinably long. All of these all surfed in on that very temporal ambiguity, and the fact that we have zero recourse in a plurality of cases - a situation that…

There's nothing wrong with pattern recognition. I'm just cautioning against a knee-jerk reaction based on the current information, which is limited, and will become more clear over the next few days. I don't think the outcome will be particularly unexpected (I assume that Anthropic will have to kiss the ring), but it's not yet clear what the outcome is. I mostly take issue with uninformed people claiming with ignoran…

I'm with you on the uninformed / confident vector in general, but you do seem fairly level-headed so I still want your take on the question: what do we do about it? How do we approach the problem of "most of our problems stem from an intractable information asymmetry, and this could be existential"?

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use nuance and judgement, friend. Anthropic notably pushed back on completely autonomous no-human-in-the-loop drone killings and mass surveillance of the US population, where others like OpenAI scrambled to agree. Anthropic isn't perfect but that doesn't make them equally bad.

I didn't say or even imply that OpenAI and Anthropic are equally bad on this front. It's just not accurate to say Anthropic has issues with the US military using Claude to commit war crimes. They don't.

They literally do -- see above, where the red line they refused to cross involved fully autonomous kill bots (which would be a war crime), and for which they were branded a supply chain risk, thrown out of Pentagon contracts, and now enjoined from releasing their product.

You can not like that Claude was involved in the planning that led to the murder of a bunch of schoolgirls, but stop playing pretend.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing that LLMs can do that humans cannot. If you are worried about bank accounts getting hacked, that's a problem to be solved on the banking side.

It's the scale problem (both speed and access) with LLMs. Don't you think the barrier to entry for hacking has become lower with LLMs?

Not really. Firstly, speed and access are actually money problems.

Secondly, motivated state actors have no dearth of money. It's not like the Chinese are saying "oh it would cost a bit too much to infiltrate all US financial systems, we'd have done it if it cost less."

If it can be done, it would've already been done. No party that matters is materially "unblocked" by the advent of LLMs.

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