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Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

anthropic.com

11–20 of 99 posts

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#11
Meanwhile, the best models with sensible OSI-approved licenses are from China.

What are the security implications if American corpos like Google DeepMind, Microsoft GitHub, Anthropic and “Open”AI have explicitly anticompetitive / noncommercial licenses for greed/fear, so the only models people can use without fear of legal repercussions are Chinese?

Surely, Capitalism wouldn’t lead us to make a tremendous unforced error at societal scale?

Every AI is a sleeper agent risk if nobody has the balls and / or capacity to verify their inputs. Guess who wrote about that? https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05566

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#12
post #6
post #3

There's no doubt that LLMs massively expand the ability of agencies like the NSA to perform large-scale surveillance at a higher quality. I wonder if Anthropic (or other LLM providers) ever push back or restrict these kinds of use cases? Or is that too risky for them?

They're pretty clear about being pro safety to the extreme, and mass surveillance to protect american interests and abuse of LLM tech (e.g. open source misuses) are probably within the umbrella of ends justifying the means logic anthropic employs.

When you see the kinds of things that are developed in the name of "defense" it's easy to see how AI "safety" could become a similar sort of doublespeak.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#13
post #3

There's no doubt that LLMs massively expand the ability of agencies like the NSA to perform large-scale surveillance at a higher quality. I wonder if Anthropic (or other LLM providers) ever push back or restrict these kinds of use cases? Or is that too risky for them?

That ship has probably sailed. If Llama3 is performing on par with GPT-3.5, then there is no real benefit for companies to restrict access to slightly better proprietary models.

GPT-4 is “holy shit, this actually works, could be better but it’s so good I almost can’t believe it” while GPT-3.5 is “when it works it’s pretty great, just a pity it almost never does”.

So I would assume that three letter agencies would love to take something like GPT-4 and fine tune it based on all the data they have about existing terrorists.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#14
> Claude offers a wide range of potential applications for government agencies, both in the present and looking toward the future. Government agencies can use Claude to provide improved citizen services, streamline document review and preparation, enhance policymaking with data-driven insights, and create realistic training scenarios. In the near future, AI could assist in disaster response coordination, enhance public health initiatives, or optimize energy grids for sustainability. Used responsibly, AI has the potential to transform how elected governments serve their constituents and promote peace and security.

> For example, we have crafted a set of contractual exceptions to our general Usage Policy that are carefully calibrated to enable beneficial uses by carefully selected government agencies. These allow Claude to be used for legally authorized foreign intelligence analysis, such as combating human trafficking, identifying covert influence or sabotage campaigns, and providing warning in advance of potential military activities, opening a window for diplomacy to prevent or deter them.

Sometimes I wonder if this is cynicism or if they actually drank their own cool-aid.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#15
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it really though? So far I've seen most of the "revolutionise" claims to be mainly hot air and marketing. It's possible that LLMs will suddenly make a leap in reliability and usability (e.g. much higher context window without corresponding massive increases in memory usage). But I have yet to see it. So far it's great at some specific usecases. Interacting with humans, rewriting or making up text. Summarising. A…

I use LLMs extensively in my field to automate all sorts of tasks. Need to classify a million PDF documents for cheap? Write a prompt and submit a batch job. Need to read 30,000 drilling reports to automatically scan for hazards? Done in 60 minutes. These are tasks that would have taken months of development or millions of dollars in manual effort before. It's not just hype.

Boy, I can’t wait for the foundation of my house to disappear because the LLM mis-classified a drilling report as non-hazardous.

What’s the deal here with liability and accountability? That’s a serious problem when considering using these for anything other than toy problems.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#16
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it really though? So far I've seen most of the "revolutionise" claims to be mainly hot air and marketing. It's possible that LLMs will suddenly make a leap in reliability and usability (e.g. much higher context window without corresponding massive increases in memory usage). But I have yet to see it. So far it's great at some specific usecases. Interacting with humans, rewriting or making up text. Summarising. A…

I use LLMs extensively in my field to automate all sorts of tasks. Need to classify a million PDF documents for cheap? Write a prompt and submit a batch job. Need to read 30,000 drilling reports to automatically scan for hazards? Done in 60 minutes. These are tasks that would have taken months of development or millions of dollars in manual effort before. It's not just hype.

A genuine question and not meant as a snipe: as hallucinations are an inherent “feature” of LLMs, how can you be sure of the accuracy of the model’s interpretation of those 30,000 drilling report hazards? Or what is the acceptable level of risk?

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ship has probably sailed. If Llama3 is performing on par with GPT-3.5, then there is no real benefit for companies to restrict access to slightly better proprietary models.

GPT-4 is “holy shit, this actually works, could be better but it’s so good I almost can’t believe it” while GPT-3.5 is “when it works it’s pretty great, just a pity it almost never does”. So I would assume that three letter agencies would love to take something like GPT-4 and fine tune it based on all the data they have about existing terrorists.

I'm still dealing with hallucinations nearly every time I use it.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#19

I find all of the virtue signalling from AI companies exhausting.

It's interesting how we dismiss anyone caring about things other than profit as virtue signally. Anthropic was founded by people who seemed to legitimately care about AI safety. It's possible the current conglomeration that is the company doesn't, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that.

Re: Anthropic: Expanding Access to Claude for Government

#20
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it really though? So far I've seen most of the "revolutionise" claims to be mainly hot air and marketing. It's possible that LLMs will suddenly make a leap in reliability and usability (e.g. much higher context window without corresponding massive increases in memory usage). But I have yet to see it. So far it's great at some specific usecases. Interacting with humans, rewriting or making up text. Summarising. A…

I use LLMs extensively in my field to automate all sorts of tasks. Need to classify a million PDF documents for cheap? Write a prompt and submit a batch job. Need to read 30,000 drilling reports to automatically scan for hazards? Done in 60 minutes. These are tasks that would have taken months of development or millions of dollars in manual effort before. It's not just hype.

Would you trust your LLM to file your taxes for you?
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