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The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

understandingai.org

11–20 of 247 posts

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#12
post #3

I agree. This is a spectacular mistake. Anthropic has the best "AI" on the planet. Anthropic can spin up a giant "Claude" and plan rings around the Pentagon. DoD better get used to losing that fight.

Claude is the best, but Gemini with DoD money could get as good as Claude very easily

I think it'd be surprising if money is the limiting factor in Gemini's success considering Google has very deep pockets, so that's probably not true.

Also, Gemini with DoD money and DoD direction is likely to result in an AI that works very well for the DoD but significantly less well for other things, especially if your use case benefits from some guardrails (and most use cases do, because you rarely want AI to just do whatever it fancies.)

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#13
post #9

This whole standoff could set a very important precedent of the Trump administration not getting what they want, and not in a "maneuvered out of the news spotlight" kind of way (e.g. Greenland), but in a public "FUCK OFF right in your face" kind of way. The worst that can happen to Anthropic is one of the two things mentioned; loosing some contracts or some fake forced management from the Pentagon. maybe Dario having…

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Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#15
post #4

the Pentagon is the name of a building (pretty much a very large bikeshed). I see the actual agency is named by the author as the Defense Department and one of the officials in question is a Defense Secretary. Interestingly, the bikeshed itself has its own spokes people.

It’s called a metonym. Look it up.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#16
post #3

I agree. This is a spectacular mistake. Anthropic has the best "AI" on the planet. Anthropic can spin up a giant "Claude" and plan rings around the Pentagon. DoD better get used to losing that fight.

Claude is the best, but Gemini with DoD money could get as good as Claude very easily

Gemini is just the worst of the 3 horses. The gov will eventually make them all to bend the knee. PRISM already showed they(eventually) all comply. I personally see this more like PR for Anthropic before the IPO

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#17
post #4

the Pentagon is the name of a building (pretty much a very large bikeshed). I see the actual agency is named by the author as the Defense Department and one of the officials in question is a Defense Secretary. Interestingly, the bikeshed itself has its own spokes people.

The Pentagon is a synecdoche for military leadership in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#18
Article doesn’t demonstrate a good understanding of DoW’s relationship with contractors. Anthropic wanted those sweet, sweet, taxpayer dollars—well, this is what happens when you make a Faustian bargain.

> One option is to invoke the Defense Production Act. . .

> Another threat would be to declare Anthropic to be a supply chain risk. . .

The first is a wrist-slap that still gets the government what they want; the second is an existential threat to Anthropic. Their main partners are all “dogs of the military”. Microsoft, Intuit, NVIDIA: all government contractors. I can’t find one company that they have a working relationship with that doesn’t hold at least one govt contract.

The idea that Claude could alignment fake its way out of a change in contractual terms is silly. The DoW has all sorts of legal and administrative tools it can choose to leverage against contractors that fail to perform. Usually it doesn’t, because of a “norm” that says the private defense sector runs more smoothly when the government doesn’t try to micromanage it.

Remind me again how good this administration is at upholding norms?

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#20
post #4

the Pentagon is the name of a building (pretty much a very large bikeshed). I see the actual agency is named by the author as the Defense Department and one of the officials in question is a Defense Secretary. Interestingly, the bikeshed itself has its own spokes people.

The White House is also the name of a building.

News sources have been using both building names (and several more I can think of off the top of my head) as short hand for the people who work inside of them for my entire life.

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