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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

#221

Post by stinkbeetle »

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…

> 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.

I don't think it was very common really.

I think for the most part it was tech companies whose systems were not being used for war who like to boast that they refused to let their systems be used for war. Or that they creatively interpreted "for war" that since they were not actually manufacturing explosives, they could claim it was not for war.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#222

Post by [deleted] »

fadesibert wrote: post #214
ryandrake wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. (spoiler alert) Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius ? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far…

If you are waiting until undergraduate level to take ethics, it's far too late to matter anyways. Doubly so for "business ethics" classes which became à la mode in the post-Enron era. They attempt to teach fundamental ethics, when at most it should be a very thin layer on top of a well founded internal moral framework and well-accepted ethical standards inculcated from day 1 of kindergarten. Morals are taught 0-9 [0]…

[deleted]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#223

Post by jrflowers »

endominus wrote: post #175
jrflowers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest protest in world history was in response to the invasion of Iraq. It’s reasonable to call it unpopular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_Iraq_War_prot...

Sure, but it's not reasonable to call it as unpopular domestically as the Vietnam War, which had more than 12 times the casualties, spread over a group that on the whole was unwilling to fight and had to be drafted into the conflict, thereby spreading the pain of lost loved ones throughout society rather than concentrating it heavily into the poorer and less politically powerful social and economic classes. As unpopu…

That’s reasonable. In the context of the larger discussion here a post up thread’s implication that a graduate in 2007 would be anti-war because of Vietnam is kind of dubious. Public opinion of the war shifted quite a lot in the four years after “Mission Accomplished” and Freedom Fries.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#225

Post by tombert »

hedora wrote: post #154
mrcwinn wrote: post #74

The internal memo did read as fairly unhinged and political, which is not the message Dario likes to present. I'm glad he addressed this. It was unprofessional and unhelpful - even if Sam Altman is, in fact, a disgusting lunatic.

The one where he accuses Trump of retaliating against Anthropic after failing to solicit a bribe? That should be the headline here. We know Trump personally made $4B last year, and we know he's been using the full power of the US gov't to retaliate against people that don't "support" him. Come 2029, when there's an opportunity for the corruption trials to start, this sort of behavior needs to be front of the public m…

I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it.

Now we have a president who doesn't even hide his bribes, and instead starts multiple cryptocurrencies and has a publicly traded company in order to optimize the bribery. Maybe this is this "Department of Government Efficiency" thing I keep hearing about; it's never been more efficient to bribe public officials.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#226

Post by ArchieScrivener »

rockskon wrote: post #120
ArchieScrivener wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Values relating to mistrust of the military (as per the context of the post I responded to) as well as values relating to ownership of the tech you bought and of personal privacy. Get off your high horse and stop talking down to a person you don't know. Take your anger out on someone else.

[flagged]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#227

Post by metalcrow »

esafak wrote: post #210
metalcrow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tech companies were these? I was younger in 2007 but i feel like i would remember if companies were openly refusing to participate in war.

Such protests are commonplace at Google: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...

Yeah, and they still happen even today (there were some recent ones with ICE and Israel), but the companies themselves have still worked in war businesses.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#228

Post by esafak »

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my…

As Tom Lehrer sang:

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#229

Post by abustamam »

WatchDog wrote: post #156
hamdingers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to be surprised how many people haven't heard term until now, it's been in common use in the US for 20+ years. To me the most Orwellian thing is everyone using the newspeak name for the DoD.

After hearing Palmer Luckey's argument for the name change[0], I tend to think it's good change. Some of his arguments: It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name. Department of war is a more honest name, department of defense is a somewhat newspeak term, although "Department of Peace" would be worse. It'…

> It's harder to seek funding for "war"

I'm confused. This seems like a bad change.

Regarding Luckey's other statements, I can almost assure you that the administration did not think as much about it as Luckey has. Insecure Pete just thought the title "Secretary of Defense" was too wussy so he wanted to be Secretary of War.

Also, I think people mainly have issue with the fact that Trump is just randomly and unilaterally renaming random stuff and demolishing buildings without congressional approval. If he had gone through the correct alleys then maybe people could ignore it. Maybe. We'd probably still have qualms about it, but at least we'd know that our representatives had a say.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#230

Post by fwipsy »

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…

Attitude towards war depends on context. In 2007 "war" meant "Iraq" which was extremely unpopular, pointless, and had an imperialist flavor. Today "war" means Gaza, Iran, and Venezuela, but it also means Ukraine and Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. I suspect Amodei and many Anthropic employees are thinking of the latter.
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