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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#21

Post by mempko »

Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people.

This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of blood on your hands.

I saw a someone's hypothesis that a generative model was used to help classify buildings to decide what to bomb and that the Girls school was misclassified. If this was an Anthropic model, I can imagine what it feels like being a worker there in that line of business.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#22

Post by 6thbit »

> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations.

> we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible.

Why are people leaving openAI when this is Anthropic's stance? Are their two narrow requirements enough to draw the ethical boundary people are comfortable with?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#23

Post by PostOnce »

simonw wrote: post #12

Raised an eyebrow a little at this sentence: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."

Let me rephrase it for you:

"We both want a docile American public who go along with our desires so we can achieve goals that may be contrary to the interests of the American public."

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#24

Post by rockskon »

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

Military isn't quite as aggressively catering to the people who historically have bullied techies as they used to.

Aside from that - there's a lot more people in tech now. It grew too fast too quick to maintain all the values it had back in the 00's and earlier.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#25

Post by jmward01 »

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#26

Post by 6thbit »

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

> they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war,

This is what baffles me when I see people flocking to them for subscriptions based on these events.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#29

Post by camillomiller »

6thbit wrote: post #22

> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations. > we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition i…

Frankly it’s a shitshow all around. The truth is that nobody gives a fuck about this. They have no moral qualms, just practical. And these are the people that should bring us the future. Man what a depressing scenario.
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