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We Will Not Be Divided

notdivided.org

181–190 of 912 posts

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#181
post #165
post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

I think the bigger insanity here is the labeling of a supply chain risk. It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. It's another when it actively attempts to isolate Anthropic for political reasons.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#182
post #75
post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

> I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has And where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)

Well that's quite a leap to make. Plenty of room in between those options.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#183
post #165
post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

The government is doing far more than “refusing to do business” here.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#184
post #165
post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

> The Department of War is threatening to […] Invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to serve their model to the military and "tailor its model to the military's needs"

This issue is about more than the government blacklisting a company for government procurement purposes.

From what I understand, the government is floating the idea of compelling Anthropic — and, by extension, its employees — to do as the DoD pleases.

If the employees’ resistance is strong enough, there’s no way this will serve the government’s interests.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#185
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human" would be a world in which people could easily create humanity-ending bioweapons. I would love to live in a less vulnerable world, and am working full time to bring about such a world, but in the meantime what you describe would likely be a disaster.

I’m tired of these bizarre hypothetical gotcha arguments. If AI can create bioweapons, it can equally create vaccines and antidotes to them. We live in a free society. AI should be democratized like any other technology.

Symmetry is not guaranteed. If someone creates a deadly pathogen with a long pre-symptomatic period (which we know is possible, since HIV works this way) it could infect essentially everyone before discovery. Yes, powerful AI would likely rapidly speed up the process of responding to the threat after detection, especially in designing countermeasures, but if we don't learn about the threat in time we lose.

There are people today who could create such a pathogen, but not many. Widespread access to powerful AI risks lowering the bar enough that we get overlap between "people who want to kill us all" and "people able to kill us all".

This is not a gotcha argument, this is what I work full time on preventing: https://naobservatory.org The world must be in a position to detect attacks early enough that they won't succeed, and we're not there yet.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run local models on Mac studios and they are more than capable. Don’t spread fud.

You're spreading fud. There's nothing you can run locally that's on par with the speed/intelligence of a SOTA model.

You may be correct about the level of models you can actually run on consumer hardware, but it's not fud and you're being needlessly aggressive here.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#187

Imagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn't use against X or Y country. Private companies imposing such demands on our military should not be respected. Having weapons that can randomly detect a false positive and shut themselves down because they think you are using it wrong is a feature I would never want built in. I have also been against these terms of services of restricting usage of AI models. It…

> Imagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn't use against X or Y country.

The point here, of course, being that Anthropic is very specifically claiming to not be a gun manufacturer, and Hegseth's response is that the DoD (W?) will force anthropic to build guns.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#188
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?

[flagged]

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#189
post #150
post #123

I've gathered that the dispute is over Anthropic's two red lines: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Is there any information (or rumors even) about what the specific request was? I can't believe the government would be escalating this hard over "we might want to do autonomous weapons in the vague, distant future" without a concrete, immediate request that Anthropic was denying. Even if there was a desir…

My understanding is that it’s about the contract allowing Anthropic to refuse service when they deem a red line has been crossed. Hegseth and friends probably don’t want any discussions to even start, about whether a red line may be in the process of being crossed, and having to answer to that. They don’t want the legality or ethicality of any operation to be under Anthropic’s purview at all.

I think you're right, this isn't about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey's statement on X/Twitter reflects the same idea: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294

The thinking seems to be that you can't have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilaterally. Imagine if every missile, ship, plane, gun, and defense software builder had their own set of moral red lines and their own remote kill switch for different parts of your defense infrastructure. Palmer would prefer that the President wield these powers through his Constitutional role as commander-in-chief.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#190
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m tired of these bizarre hypothetical gotcha arguments. If AI can create bioweapons, it can equally create vaccines and antidotes to them. We live in a free society. AI should be democratized like any other technology.

This is just not thinking clearly. There are bad things that are asymmetric in character, dramatically easier to do than to mitigate. There’s no antidote or vaccine to nuclear weapons.

It is not easy to create weapons. Why do you think the physical and legal barriers that exist today that prevent you from acquiring equipment and creating nuclear weapons will go away when everyone becomes smarter?
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