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Our Agreement with the Department of War

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Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#191

Post by notepad0x90 »

piker wrote: post #103
notepad0x90 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but are you taking the gov's side? Anthropic's standard was the constitutions. The executive branch has no authorization under US law to perform surveillance of any kind on its own. OpenAI will now be breaking US law, Anthropic simply decided to obey US law. The US government can update its laws and come back to Anthropic, or do what they just did

No, I'm not taking the government's side. I'm telling the government's side. That's probably true that the executive branch can't do those things, but it may be able to do so in the future. Thus, Anthropic's rule would then be inconsistent with the laws applying to the government. > The US government can update its laws and come back to Anthropic No, this I do take issue with. It's the people who update the U.S. gove…

the people via their elected reps.. the government. The government is of the people and by the people. They're not different if democracy is truly working.

> but it may be able to do so in the future.

You don't obey laws in the future, you obey laws today. Companies have an obligation to follow the laws as written today. Not only that, as americans they and all americans have a patriotic and civic duty to resist attempts to bypass or undermine the constitution of their country. You literally can't be patriotic or loyal to your country without doing so, it is what constitutes the country.

It's not like Anthropic can't update their guardrails and contracts once the laws of the land are updated. They simply resisted a criminal and treasonous abuse of power.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#192

Post by jonnybgood »

tapoxi wrote: post #185
shikon7 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, executive orders can't change law and international law, unless ratified by congress, is not democratically legitimized and applicable law in the US to begin with

We just started a war with Iran without congressional approval or briefing, so I'm not sure if law has meaning anymore.

War Powers Resolution. Obviously, there’s a law of which multiple presidents have used. Congress can change this law but there is a law that does give the POTUS this authority.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#193

Post by notepad0x90 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #75
notepad0x90 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this very devious and insidious. What the executive branch believes is legal is the real agreement here. Trump can say anything is legal and that's that. There is no judicial overview, there are no lawyers defending the rights of those who are being harmed. Trump can tell the pentagon "everyone in minnesota is a potential insurrectionist, do mass surveillance on them under the patriot act and the insurrection act…

> Trump can tell the pentagon "everyone in minnesota is a potential insurrectionist, do mass surveillance on them under the patriot act and the insurrection act". This is just incoherent. You can't have US companies fix an unhinged US government. If the government runs wild, there are some serious questions to be asked at a state level, about how that could happen, how to fix it quickly and how to prevent it in the f…

> This is just incoherent. You can't have US companies fix an unhinged US government.

Which part? No one expects them to fix the government, matter of fact they should stay far away from it. However, they have a duty to obey the law and to be patriotic. All companies must resist attempts by the government to betray its people, because the government derives its authority from the people, therefore in its betrayal it has become an illegitimate enemy of the people instead of their legitimate government.

> because if the government can de fact do what it wants regardless of legality the next thing that this government does could simply be pointing increasingly non-metaphorical guns at individual AI company functionaries.

It feels like you and half the country never even at least watched movies surrounding nazi germany. The government can do whatever it wants, but whether it is companies, individuals working for it, or soldiers under orders, the government's authority does not excuse their participation. The government can't do anything at all on its own, it needs people to do it. If Obama wanted to get Anthropic to let their models aid al-qaeda with attacking America, should Anthropic say "oh well, since you're the government, go ahead?" This is the same thing. Ever heard of the phrase "enemies foreign or domestic" in the swearing of oaths? Company executives are beholden to the laws of the country they operate in. I mean, with Nazis at least their orders, and the orders of companies under their regime was lawful, even then it was not an excuse but they just changed the laws to make their orders lawful. Right now, we have laws and the government is breaking it, even "i followed lawful orders" isn't an excuse. Sam Altman is complicit in the violation of the American constitution and the betrayal of its people.

If all else fails, I expect the government to just train their own models. In which case, I'd say the engineers working in that effort should have resisted.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#194

Post by davesque »

tfehring wrote: post #117

> For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with t…

i.e. Combing through public forums on the internet looking for evidence of thought crime, however, is fair game. The Trump admin will undoubtedly use tools like this to compile a list political enemies or undesirables, which they will then use to harass people or selectively restrict individual rights. They're already doing this and this is just going to make it easier for them.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#195

Post by soraminazuki »

kivle wrote: post #153
avaer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "legal" is doing all of the heavy lifting. Considering the countless adjudicated illegal things that the government is doing publicly. What happens behind classified closed doors? I guess you can consider it a moral stance that if the government constantly does illegal things you wouldn't trust them to follow the law. I know that's not what Anthropic said but that's the gist I'm getting.

Does legal include international law, which the US has broken numerous times the last two days?

> This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#196

Post by notepad0x90 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #79
notepad0x90 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mass surveillance is explicitly unlawful in the US. it is in the bill of rights. By definition it is injustice under the law. Even for terrorists in the US they have to go through a FISA court and get warrants. Consider this, the bill of rights stipulates that a soldier cannot be stationed on your property in times of peace, but in times of war it will be allowed. It makes exceptions for times of war. but even in tim…

On the hook for what? The current US government has a fundamentally different ontology for the derivation of human rights. Wheras you and I likely agree that human rights are inalienable due to them being derived from the universe nature of human experience, the administration believes that human rights begin and end with them, the state. When they're the one able to affect the world with violence, it doesn't matter…

On the hook for whatever comes after. Best case scenario, democrats will peacefully take control again, and pretend to forget about Sam's complicity. But he'll still face civil suits, I hope personally as well as the company itself.

Wort case, the current admin will make nazis look like cosplayers, and within a decade or so, he'll be standing next other ceos facing a tribunal in front of whatever entity managed to topple the former regime, and it will be under warcrime terms that are yet to be defined and for atrocities, which if history teaches us anything, will be so horrific our current ability to imagine antrocities is insufficient to allows to speculate on their nature.

In short, whatever trump does with openai, Sam Altman is in the "whatever trump wants to do was lawful" camp. Even then, perhaps the next regime will fail to learn from history and focus on rebuilding, but if they do learn from history they'll understand that you really can't hold back when it comes to these things. We're in this mess because of failure to sufficiently punish the nazis and the confederates in the US, both of which lasted only for about half a decade by the way. it isn't enough to teach people how horrible nazis and confederates were, the German approach is sensible, but a more extreme approach might be required.

Funny thing is, this might just save openai from total collapse. But if this is the price to keeping the economy alive, even at my own personal cost I hope the economy collapses completely along with these companies and regime.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#197

Post by wrsh07 »

kivle wrote: post #154
_alternator_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what it says: the only restrictions are the restrictions that are already in law. This seems like the weasel language Dario was talking about.

Laws that can be changed on a whim by "executive orders", or laws that apparently can be ignored completely, like international law.

They do note that their contract language specifically references the laws as they exist today.

Presumably if the laws become less restrictive, that does not impact OpenAI's contract with them (nothing would change) but if the laws become more restrictive (eg certain loopholes in processing American's data get closed) then OpenAI and the DoD should presumably^ not break the new laws.

^ we all get to decide how much work this presumably is doing

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#198

Post by wrsh07 »

_alternator_ wrote: post #151
tfehring wrote: post #117

> For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with t…

This is exactly what it says: the only restrictions are the restrictions that are already in law. This seems like the weasel language Dario was talking about.

Not that this means the big AI corps should relax their values (it truly doesn't), but I would be extremely surprised if the DoD/DoW doesn't have anyone capable of fine tuning an open weights model for this purpose.

And, I mean, if they don't, gpt 5.3 is going to be pretty good help

Given the volume fine tuning a small model is probably the only cost effective way to do it anyway

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#199

Post by michaelteter »

kingo55 wrote: post #71
arppacket wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, they're letting the lawless administration decide what the lawful purposes and the policies in general are. The "human approval" will be someone clicking a YES button all the time, like Israeli officers did in the Gaza bombing.

"Vibe killing"

Wow. This word pair will surely become part of common language soon.

I’d say we are making this simulation quite interesting, aren’t we.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#200

Post by notepad0x90 »

Nevermark wrote: post #87
notepad0x90 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mass surveillance is explicitly unlawful in the US. it is in the bill of rights. By definition it is injustice under the law. Even for terrorists in the US they have to go through a FISA court and get warrants. Consider this, the bill of rights stipulates that a soldier cannot be stationed on your property in times of peace, but in times of war it will be allowed. It makes exceptions for times of war. but even in tim…

> I'll even say this, the US military itself is on the hook if they stand by and let this happen. That would most definitely not be the Constitutional recourse. Or a sensible approach. If that happens, the Constitution is past tense. Congress and the Supreme Court are the recourse. If they don't hold up the Constitution then violence or even a non-violent military coup, however well intended, are not going to put the…

They swore an oath to defend the constitution of the US against enemies both foreign and domestic. It is entirely lawful for them to fulfill that duty.

If the commander in cheif and the civilian administration are clearly and unquestionably violating the constitution, they are no longer legitimate. If they are acting to harm the american people, acting as agents of a foreign enemy or as a domestic enemy to harm the american people, then they are not only illegitimate but the military is oath-bound to fight them with necessary force.

> That the weakening of loyalty to the Constitution has been pervasive on those serious counts, is one of the reasons it has been so easy to undermine further.

I can agree with that, that is because the people who swore an oath to defend it have not done so. They wave flags like it's a sports team they're cheering for.

Ultimately, the design of the constitution is such that either the people taking arms, or a patriotic military resisting the government would serve as the ultimate recourse. The system of checks and balances works so long as consequences are still a thing. If in the 1800s a president decided to do half the things trump did, anyone could shoot his face off and get away with it without consequence. These things aren't practical anymore.

The military has the duty to resist unlawful orders. But if a russian agent usurped the US government and civilians are incapable of doing something about it, then that's what they're there for. The military doesn't exist to bomb foreign countries thousands of miles away, it is there to defend the homeland. The original idea was that if laws are no longer a thing (obeyed by the government) the lawlessness would be too terrifying for those in power, therefore lawfulness is in their interest.

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