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Our Agreement with the Department of War

openai.com

201–210 of 306 posts

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#201

I don't think Anthropic is a saint that will never do anything unethical. I don't think ChatGPT is any better or worse. But I do think my cancelling ChatGPT so I can try Claude, at this time, sends the message I want to send, which is why I did it.

It's also good to demonstrate to these companies that we're willing to move. If these companies know their entire userbase will just pack up and move at the first controversy, there wont be any controversies.

Consumer actions are meaningless here. If Altman can become Trump’s new best friend (can’t wait to watch the Altman/Musk drama), there will be so much public money directed toward OpenAI that they can stop wasting their time on the puny people.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

I'm so sorry, but the closure of justice will never occur. The United States is incompatible with its existence.

As much as a third reconstruction is desperately needed, my desire for its existence is not materially tied to it being rendered into the world.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#203
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who decides what's legal? The US was collecting illegal tariff revenue for ten months. Does OpenAI need to wait for the Supreme Court to strike down autonomous killbots?

That's the devil in the details. Sam altman's insult upon injury, treating the public as idiots on top of being a collaborator. The answer to your question is the government decides what is legal, as in the executive branch, in the pentagon the commander in chief decides. So essentially, they can do whatever they want so long as they call it legal. As I said in a sibling comment, mass surveillance cannot be considere…

Google? They have a terrible track record on upholding moral principles. They helped Chinese censorship, wrote software for American killer drones, and offered their services to genocidal regimes. They fired dissenting employees. They are one of the worst companies to be rooting for.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#204

> 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.

Yes. And I'm sure the next administration will as well. These things only ratchet in one direction.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the devil in the details. Sam altman's insult upon injury, treating the public as idiots on top of being a collaborator. The answer to your question is the government decides what is legal, as in the executive branch, in the pentagon the commander in chief decides. So essentially, they can do whatever they want so long as they call it legal. As I said in a sibling comment, mass surveillance cannot be considere…

Google ? They have a terrible track record on upholding moral principles. They helped Chinese censorship, wrote software for American killer drones, and offered their services to genocidal regimes. They fired dissenting employees. They are one of the worst companies to be rooting for.

This isn't about moral principles. In china, censorship is legal. In the US mass surveillance is not. Even for those "genocidal regimes", it was lawful use. even now, both anthropic and openai agree that their models can be used in war and censorship just like with china, since those things are lawful. Even with genocide, from what i understand, the safeguard is that humans have to be in the loop, not that it won't aid the efforts.

I don't expect companies to be moral, but I do expect them to be patriotic, and to obey the law. And I also expect the government to punish them sufficiently when they fail to do so. The morality part is for the people to legislate or some other way enact laws to reflect their beliefs. Companies don't get a vote at the ballot box and they certainly are not agents for moral arbitrage between a government and its people.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#206
post #198

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.

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

Contrary to benchmarks, open weight models are way behind the frontier.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#207

> 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…

Even worse is the kill-bot policy. The eventual-human-in-the-loop clause. aka as yolo mode or --dangerously-skip-permissions

Imagine arming chatgpt and letting it pick targets and launch missiles from clawdbot.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#208
post #197
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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

Where?

> The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.

Sounds like it's worded to specifically apply to whatever law is currently applicable, no?

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#209

> Fully autonomous weapons. The cloud deployment surface covered in our contract would not permit powering fully autonomous weapons, as this would require edge deployment. Can anyone explain this constraint? Why do fully autonomous weapons require edge deployment? Does "fully autonomous" in this context mean "disconnected from the Internet"? If so, can a drone with Internet connectivity use OpenAI? Or maybe it's abou…

My bullshit alarms were blaring at this line. They really think we are that stupid.

Re: Our Agreement with the Department of War

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it more accurate here to consider OpenAI and Anthropic as service providers rather than a manufacturer of product?

The service they provide is on-premises deployment, I guess. But what they are deploying is a product.

The relevant (unanswered?) question for this thread is who's operating and managing that deployment, and to what extent provider (or subcontracted FDEs) is involved in integrations. I would be surprised to learn of deployment actually being independently operated. Sure the machinery can be considered a product but associated service- and support engagements are at least as relevant to take into account.
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