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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

#211

Post by yujzgzc »

qaid wrote: 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…

> the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"?

Sounds more like the door is open for this once reliability targets are met.

I don't think that's unreasonable. Hardware and regular software also have their own reliability limitations, not to mention the meatsacks behind the joystick.

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

#212

Post by urikaduri »

qaid wrote: 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…

The Ghandi of the corporate world is yet to be found

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

#213

Post by sfink »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #113
_cenw wrote: 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?

I'm glad to see this as the top comment. I was, until recently, a loyal Anthropic customer. No more. Because the way non-Americans are spoken of by a company that serves an international market (and this isn't the first instance): "Mass domestic surveillance. We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass _domestic_ surveillance is incompati…

My guess is that they can't object to foreign intelligence, and would lose negotiating ground if they even tried.

Optimistically, they can still refuse to do work that would aid in foreign intelligence gathering, by arguing that it would also be beneficial for domestic mass surveillance.

I'll admit that the phrase "We support...foreign intelligence and counterintelligence" is awful as hell, and it's possible that my apologist claims are BS. But Anthropic has very little leverage here (despite having a signed contract and so legally fully in the right), so I could see why they're desperate to stick to only the most solid objections available.

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

#214

Post by tsunamifury »

inigyou wrote: post #86
davidw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a one-election thing. It's going to be a generational effort to fix what these people are breaking more of every day. I hope I live to see it come to some kind of fruition - I recently turned 50.

Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation" No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.

Rome was 'in decline' for 1000 years... these things are mostly feel good blather and not realistic statements on the position of nations

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

#216

Post by [deleted] »

goatlover wrote: post #165
TaupeRanger wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would you expect? The military is obviously going to develop the most powerful systems they can. Do you want a tech company to say “the military can never use our stuff for autonomous systems forever, the end”? What if Anthropic ends up developing the safest, most cost effective systems for that purpose?

I'd prefer companies not help the military develop the most powerful weapons possible given we're in the age of WMDs, have already had two devastating world wars and a nuclear arms race that puts humanity under permanent risk.

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by jmyeet »

nutjob2 wrote: post #180
statuslover9000 wrote: post #124

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.

Your comment reads like propaganda.

You know who else considers Taiwan to be part of the People's Republic of China? The US, the EU and in fact most countries in the world. It's called the One China policy. There are I believe 12 countries that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

The position of the PRC is that Taiwan will ultimately be reunified. That doesn't necessarily mean by military force. It doesn't even necessarily mean soon. The PRC famously takes a very long term view.

And those islands you mention are in the South China Sea.

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

#219

Post by dheera »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #160

I was concerned originally when I heard that Anthropic, who often professed to being the "good guy" AI company who would always prioritize human welfare, opted to sell priority access to their models to the Pentagon in the first place. The devil's advocate position in their favor I imagine would be that they believe some AI lab would inevitably be the one to serve the military industrial complex, and overall it's bet…

> opted to sell priority access to their models to the Pentagon

The bottom of all of this is that companies need to profit to sustain themselves. If "y'all" (the users) don't buy enough of their products, they will seek new sources of revenue.

This applies to any company who has external investors and shareholders, regardless of their day 0 messaging. When push comes to shove and their survival is threatened, any customer is better than no customer.

It's very possible that $20 Claude subscriptions isn't delivering on multiple billions in investment.

The only companies that can truly hold to their missions are those that (a) don't need to profit to survive, e.g. lifestyle businesses of rich people (b) wholly owned by owners and employees and have no fiduciary duty.

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

#220

Post by cwillu »

XorNot wrote: post #143
probably_wrong wrote: post #108

I have read the whole thing but I nonetheless want to focus on the second paragraph: > Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War This should be a "have you noticed that the caps on our hats have skulls on it?" moment [1]. Even if one argues that the sentence should not be read literally (that is, that it's not literal war we're talking about), the only reason for calling…

Warfighters is a pretty common term though. There's a fair bit of nuance in when and how you'd use it.

It's a common term that comes with a lot of criticism in the vein of noticing the skulls.
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