Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

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

#221

Post by Synaesthesia »

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…

AI was always particularly well suited to military use and mass surveillance. It can take huge amounts of raw data and parse it for your, provide useful information from that. And let's face it, companies exist for profit.

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

#223

Post by scottyah »

altpaddle wrote: post #85
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…

Unfortunately I think the writing is clearly on the wall. Fully autonomous weapons are coming soon

It's only Anthropic with their current models saying no. Fully autonomous weapons have been created, deployed, and have been operational for a long time already. The only holdout I've ever heard of is for the weapons that target humans.

Honestly, even landmines could easily be considered fully autonomous weapons and they don't care if you're human or not.

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

#224

Post by archagon »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #146
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…

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?

Yes, I absolutely don’t want tech companies to use the money I pay them to harm people. How is that remotely controversial?

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

#225

Post by jamesmcq »

serf wrote: post #208
jamesmcq wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So AI systems are not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons but they are reliable enough to end all white-collar work in the next 12 months? Odd.

do you really need to be told there is a difference in 'magnitude of importance' between the decision to send out an office memo and the decision to strike a building with ordinance? a lot of white collar jobs see no decision more important than a few hours of revenue. that's the difference: you can afford to fuck up in that environment.

They’re not saying “AI can replace some menial white collar tasks”, they’re saying AI can replace all white-collar work.

Yes, if you fuck up some white collar work, people will die. It’s irresponsible.

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

#227

Post by skeledrew »

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…

Well, if they hadn't stated that were that far in line with the administration's ideals, they would likely already be fully blacklisted as enemies of the state. Whether they agree with what they're saying or not, they're walking on egg shells.

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

#228

Post by scottyah »

tempestn wrote: post #195
altpaddle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I think the writing is clearly on the wall. Fully autonomous weapons are coming soon

If they had access to them in Ukraine, both sides would already be using them I expect. Right now jamming of drones is a huge obstacle. One way it's dealt with is to run literal wired drones with massive spools of cable strung out behind them. A fully autonomous drone would be a significant advantage in this environment. I'm not making a values judgment here, just saying that they will absolutely be used in war as so…

Hah, I had the same realization about landmines. Along with the other commenter, really it would be better to add intelligence to these autonomous systems to limit the nastiness of the currently-deployed systems. If a landmine could distinguish between a real target and an innocent civilian 50yrs later, it's be a lot better.

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

#229

Post by yowayb »

lebovic wrote: post #202

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…

I've thought the same about a few of my founders/executives.

"You either die the good guy or live long enough to become the bad guy"

The "bad guy" actually learns that their former good guy mentality was too simplistic.

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

#230

Post by jmyeet »

_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?

The distinction between foreign and domestic is a legal one.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the US Constitution protects any persons physically present in the United States and its territories as well as any US citizens abroad.

So if you are a German national on US soil, you have, say, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. If you are a US citizen in Germany, you also have those rights. But a German citizen in Germany does not.

What this means in practice is that US 3-letter agencices have essentially been free to mass surveil people outside the United States. Historically these agencies have gotten around that by outsourcing their spying needs to 3 leter agencies in other countries (eg the NSA at one point might outsource spying on US citizens to GCHQ).

Post reply on HN