Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only power you have is to quit. This is an incredible power when exercised en-masse.
I am sure openAI will struggle to find replacement for the lost headcount
Top researchers are more valuable than datacenters
Our Agreement with the Department of War
131–140 of 306 posts
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#132How incredibly unsurprising. This is why it is pointless to make moral stands as employees when you do not ultimately have power over the companies decisions. The only power you have is to quit. I wonder how many will do so, and how many will simply accept Sam’s AI written rationalization as this own and keep collecting their obscene pay packages…
> The only power you have is to quit. This is an incredible power when exercised en-masse.
--and then, all the decent people no longer work there, and it's like certain other careers populated entirely with psychopaths
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#133> The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control , nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by…
> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products. Excuse me, but what a fucked up perspective. "Impose its own morals into the use of its products"? What happened to "We give each other the freedom to hold beliefs and act accordingly unless it does harm"? How on earth did it come to something where the fra…
>Excuse me, but what a fucked up perspective. "Impose its own morals into the use of its products"?
>How on earth did it come to something where the framing is that anyone is "imposing" anything on another simply by not providing services or a product that fits somebody else's need?
The department of defense in particular has a law on the books allowing them to force a company to sell them something. They generally are more than willing to pay a pretty penny for something so it hardly needs used, but I'd be shocked if any country with a serious military didn't have similar laws.
So your right when it comes to private citizens, but the DoD literally has a special carve out on the books.
A lawsuit challenging it would have actually been insane from anthropic because they would have had to argue "we're not that special you can just use someone else" in court.
A more clear example would be, what would you expect to happen if Intel and amd said our chips can't be used in computers that are used in war.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#134Saying that an entity with the power to make its own laws can use something for "all lawful purposes" is saying they can use it for anything.
Exactly. And not only can they make their own rules, but they can draft and enforce them effectively in secret.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products. Excuse me, but what a fucked up perspective. "Impose its own morals into the use of its products"? What happened to "We give each other the freedom to hold beliefs and act accordingly unless it does harm"? How on earth did it come to something where the fra…
I have the right not to sell poison to someone who I have reason to believe will use it to kill a third party. The idea of simply trusting the patron to be responsible makes sense when the patron is anonymous or a new contact. It’s generally good to assume good intentions in the absence of evidence, I think. If the government is not anonymous enough to get this treatment.
Governments have a long, long history of using "poison to kill a third party", to use your analogy.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#136In my opinion all this discussion of the contract language is a subterfuge. The real question is why the government was requesting this language in the first place. Clearly there’s more to it than a legal battle.
In my mind, the government would be fully happy to use this to surveil citizens (and indeed anyone) with or without any legal basis, but the issue was that Anthropic has a safety stack / training and inference protocols that it follows. Refusals, abuse models, and manual guardrails. They didn’t want to shut those off. Likely there were some very basic technical reasons, some being that the team’s safety posture is fully ingrained in the model itself and thus difficult to remove.
In this document, OpenAI admits that while they are not “turning off” their safety stack, they are completely willing to provide the government with a different model, different guardrails, etc. That should be incredibly concerning. Anthropic was unwilling to do this, cited their ToS, and ultimately had to walk away from the deal. Given that the government (DoW really) framed this in terms of a hilariously stupid position (surveillance and autonomous weapons), Anthropic felt that this was something they could voice to the public and therefore the entire guardrails discussion turned into a “we want the language changed”. Also the government can’t actually compel Anthropic to create new guardrails so they had no choice but to raise the stakes, make this a moral thing, and basically accuse Anthropic of being woke.
IMO this is really sad for OpenAI employees. Yet again Sam Altman proves that he wants to weasel his way around public perception. Folks at the company have to grapple with working for someone of that disposition.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#137I look forward to seeing more abusive tactics by the US government powered by AI and the language OpenAI will use to confuse the public into thinking they aren't responsible.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really going to pretend that “impose their morals” is a completely value-neutral statement?
What would be the value neutral way to phrase it?
"Anthropic wanted its product to not be used in ways that contradict its ethics".
"Impose" makes it sound like Anthropic is being hostile here. And also, I don't think this is a situation that calls for moral relativism.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products. Excuse me, but what a fucked up perspective. "Impose its own morals into the use of its products"? What happened to "We give each other the freedom to hold beliefs and act accordingly unless it does harm"? How on earth did it come to something where the fra…
Nobody is saying that Anthropic has to shut down. They’re just saying that nobody taking government money can pay Anthropic for their service as a part of that contract. Anthropic still has the right to exist on their own terms, but their business model is based on rapidly-increasing enterprise subscriptions, which included public sector spending. If Anthropic can survive on open source contributors shelling out $200…
> But surely you agree the government has a right to determine how its budget is appropriated
I think the government doesn't have rights, it is my elected representative. And I do not agree with it trying to punish a company for not agreeing to contract terms.
Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War
#140I built a website that shows a timeline of recent events involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and the U.S. government.
Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085