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Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#161

Post by esafak »

xdennis wrote: post #136
_cenw wrote: post #24

As a "foreign national", what's the deal with making the distinction between domestic mass surveillance and foreign mass surveillance? Are there no democracies aside from the US? Don't we know since Snowden that if the US wants to do domestic surveillance they'll just ask GCHQ to share their "foreign" surveillance capabilities?

> what's the deal with making the distinction between domestic mass surveillance and foreign mass surveillance? A large portion of Americans believe in "citizen rights", not "human rights". By that logic, non-Americans do not have a right to privacy.

This contradicts the opening of the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes all humans as possessing rights:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#162

Post by adastra22 »

dddgghhbbfblk wrote: post #133
danbrooks wrote: post #14

Props to Dario and Anthropic for taking a moral stand. A rarity in tech these days.

A moral stand? ... What? Did we read the same statement? It opens right out the gate with: >I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries. >Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. We were the first frontier AI company to deploy our mo…

Freedom isn’t free. Someone has to defend the democratic values that you and I take for granted.

Dario’s statement is in support of the institution, not the current administration.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#163

Post by mothballed »

adastra22 wrote: post #156
_cenw wrote: post #24

As a "foreign national", what's the deal with making the distinction between domestic mass surveillance and foreign mass surveillance? Are there no democracies aside from the US? Don't we know since Snowden that if the US wants to do domestic surveillance they'll just ask GCHQ to share their "foreign" surveillance capabilities?

You’re getting many replies, and having scrolled through much of them I do not see one that actually answers your question truthfully. The reason why there is an explicit call out for surveillance on American citizens is because there are unquestionable constitutional protections in place for American citizens on American soil. There is a strong argument that can be made that using AI to mass surveil Americans within…

I agree with your premise because this seems to be the modern interpretation of the courts, but it is not the historical interpretation.

The historical basis of the bill of rights is that they are god given rights of all people merely recognized by the government. This is also partially why all rights in the BoR are granted to 'people' instead of 'citizens.'

Of course this all does get very confusing. Because the 4th amendment does generally apply to people, while the 2nd amendment magically people gets interpreted as some mumbo-jumbo people of the 'political community' (Heller) even though from the founding until the mid 1800s ~most people it protected who kept and bore arms didn't even bother to get citizenship or become part of the 'political community'.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#164

Post by atleastoptimal »

I was concerned originally when I heard that Anthropic, who often professed to being the "good guy" AI company who would always prioritize human welfare, opted to sell priority access to their models to the Pentagon in the first place.

The devil's advocate position in their favor I imagine would be that they believe some AI lab would inevitably be the one to serve the military industrial complex, and overall it's better that the one with the most inflexible moral code be the one to do it.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#165

Post by goatlover »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #146
qaid wrote: post #62

I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…

What else would you expect? The military is obviously going to develop the most powerful systems they can. Do you want a tech company to say “the military can never use our stuff for autonomous systems forever, the end”? What if Anthropic ends up developing the safest, most cost effective systems for that purpose?

I'd prefer companies not help the military develop the most powerful weapons possible given we're in the age of WMDs, have already had two devastating world wars and a nuclear arms race that puts humanity under permanent risk.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#166

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

Computer0 wrote: post #44
danbrooks wrote: post #14

Props to Dario and Anthropic for taking a moral stand. A rarity in tech these days.

There is no moral leg to stand on here, he says here in plain english that if they wanted to use CLAUDE to perform mass surveillance on Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, that is perfectly fine.

Perhaps you just have different moral values? I suspect each of the countries you mentioned spy on us. I also suspect we spy on them. I’m glad an American company wouldn’t be so foolish as to pretend otherwise.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#167

Post by hrn_frs »

chipgap98 wrote: post #152
statuslover9000 wrote: post #124

The Sinophobic culture at Anthropic is worrying. Say what you will about authoritarianism, but China’s non-imperialist foreign policy means their economy is less reliant on a military-industrial complex. All they have to do is continue to pump out exponentially more solar panels and the petrodollar will fall, possibly taking our reserve currency status with it. The U.S. seems more likely to start a hot war in the nam…

In what world does China have a non-imperialist foreign policy?

Historically speaking, he's right. China has never had an expansionist foreign policy.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#169

Post by helaoban »

ricardobeat wrote: post #147
helaoban wrote: post #106

All of these problems are downstream of the Congress having thoroughly abdicated its powers to the executive. The military should be reigned in at the legislative level, by constraining what it can and cannot do under law. Popular action is the only way to make that happen. Energy directed anywhere else is a waste. Private corporations should never be allowed to dictate how the military acts. Such a thought would be…

> The technology can just be requisitioned During a war with national mobilization, that would make sense. Or in a country like China. This kind of coercion is not an expected part of democratic rule.

The question of whether or not the government should be able to use AI for targeting without the involvement of humans is a wartime question, since that is the only time the military should be killing people.

Under such a scenario, requisition applies, and so all of this talk is moot.

The fact that the military is killing people without a declaration of war is the problem, and that's where energy and effort should be directed.

Edit:

There's a yet larger question on whether any legal constraints on the military's use of technology even makes sense at all, since any safeguards will be quickly yielded if a real enemy presents itself. As a course of natural law, no society will willingly handicap its means of defense against an external threat.

It follows then that the only time these ethical concerns apply is when we are the aggressor, which we almost always are. It's the aggression that we should be limiting, not the technology.

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