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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

#171
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…

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.

Those unquestionable protections are phrased with enough hand-waving ambiguity of language to leave room for any conceivable interpretation by later courts. See the third-party 'exception' to the Fourth Amendment, for instance.

It's as if those morons were running out of ink or time or something, trying to finish an assignment the night before it was due.

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

#173
One piece of context that everyone should keep in mind with the recent Anthropic showdown - Anthropic is trying to land British [0], Indian [1], Japanese [2], and German [3] public sector contracts.

Working with the DoD/DoW on offensive usecases would put these contracts at risk, because Anthropic most likely isn't training independent models on a nation-to-nation basis and thus would be shut out of public and even private procurement outside the US because exporting the model for offensive usecases would be export controlled but governments would demand being parity in treatment or retaliate.

This is also why countries like China, Japan, France, UAE, KSA, India, etc are training their own sovereign foundation models with government funding and backing, allowing them to use them on their terms because it was their governments that build it or funded it.

Imagine if the EU demanded sovereign cloud access from AWS right at the beginning in 2008-09. This is what most governments are now doing with foundation models because most policymakers along with a number of us in the private sector are viewing foundation models from the same lens as hyperscalers.

Frankly, I don't see any offramp other than the DPA even just to make an example out of Anthropic for the rest of the industry.

[0] - https://www.anthropic.com/news/mou-uk-government

[1] - https://www.anthropic.com/news/bengaluru-office-partnerships...

[2] - https://www.anthropic.com/news/opening-our-tokyo-office

[3] - https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jobs/5115692008

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

#175
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?

Particularly so when those foreign nationals can be consumers. “fuck your basic human rights, but we can take your money just fine”.

If nothing else, the USA has learned that a lot of people outside their borders do not share the same ideas on basic human rights, and most of the world hates when we try to ensure them. Some countries are closely aligned with our ideals and are treated differently. There are many different layers of this, from Australia to North Korea.

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

#176

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…

100% agree. Any AI org that is that tied to a single nation's interest can only be detrimental in the long run.

I know "open-source" AI has its own risks, but with e.g. DeepSeek, people in all countries benefit. Americans benefit from it equally.

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

#177
post #67
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…

I think it's phrased just fine. It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future.

He’s one of the most influential people when it comes to what future we’ll have. Yes, it’s up to him.

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

#178
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?

The reality is that the US Constitution only offers strong guarantees to citizens and (some of) the people in the US. Foreigners are excluded and foreign mass surveillance is or will happen.

I believe every country (or block) should carve an independent path when it comes to AI training, data retention and inference. That is makes most sense, will minimize conflicts and put people in control of their destiny.

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

#179

They essentially said "we're not fans of mass surveilance of US citizens and we won't use CURRENT models to kill people autonomously" and people are saying they're taking a stand and doing the right thing? What??? I guess they're evil. Tragic.

We're living in a time where most tech companies are donating millions of dollars to the current leadership in exchange for favors.

In that climate this is a more of a stand than what everyone else is doing.

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

#180

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…

> China’s non-imperialist foreign policy

This is the China that is not only threatening to invade Taiwan but doing live fire exercises around the island and threatening and attempting to coerce Japan for suggesting saying it will go to its defense.

Your comment is ridiculous. It reads like satire.

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