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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

#261

Post by jltsiren »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #185
jltsiren wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new term was needed some decades ago. "man" titles have not been politically correct for a while, "member" sounds awkward and bureaucratic. In some other languages, "soldier" can be used for all military personnel, while English ended up with a more narrow meaning.

"Awkward and bureacratic" is literally the point of naming conventions commonly adopted by democracies. Titles like "president" or "prime minister", departments like "Department of Defense", referring to government employees as "civil servants", etc. are all intentional measures meant to strip away the prestige and egotism associated with positions of authority in an effort to avoid it going to people's heads, and to…

"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#262

Post by gentleman11 »

krapp wrote: post #123
jghn wrote: post #84

Could they please start using the correct name? Department of Defense?

The correct name is the Department of War. Calling it the Department of Defense implies a system of laws, checks and balances which no longer exists.

they should rename it to the department of invasions, domestic surveillance, and coups

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#263

Post by intexpress »

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…

It's because they need enormous amounts of money for their datacenters

And enormous amount of political support because of the negative perception of AI in society

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#264

Post by fluidcruft »

abustamam wrote: post #231
esrauch wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do a lot more war than defense don't they?

That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense. Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united…

All of that's irrelevant for what "newspeak" means.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#265

Post by monksy »

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…

It's not just that.

There was the 3 laws of robotics, where a robot/software was not to do any harm.

There was concerns over privacy and refusal of sharing your name and info on the internet. After all it's full of strategers and there was danger

Don't get into cars with strangers

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#266

Post by gentleman11 »

mempko wrote: post #21

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 bloo…

if all the good people leave all the important positions, what will happen?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#267

Post by serioussecurity »

moron4hire wrote: post #157
reaperducer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like these stories are apocryphal. They're not. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, everyone has their own coping mechanism.

What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them . My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough…

I've worked as a contractor for a safety system that turned out to be for a foreign military. I was given a signal, and told to write software to fit it. The signal could plausibly be collected for a wide variety of civilian purposes.

What I realized later was that none of the civilian markets could possibly justify the cost of the project.

The particular type of signal fitting I was doing was only achievable by a few thousand expensive domain experts in the world, so, I think that addresses your other point.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#268

Post by helpfulclippy »

6thbit wrote: post #47
brookst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mistake to conflate “wants to spend money on the most ethical option available” with “ think the most ethical option available is perfect” Why wouldn’t you move your dollars to someplace incrementally better?

You make it sound as if "the most ethical option available" is.. actually ethical? Their statement doesn't make it sound they are incrementally better, they are trying to bend over backwards to keep working for war.

I am not greatly relieved by this post of Anthropic's. That said, they seem to have lines and are willing to stand by them; I don't see where OpenAI has done that. So, for now and from my point of view, the point goes to Anthropic.

Moving my subscription is not terribly consequential, but since the products are so similar and easy to substitute with one another for my uses, it seems best to participate in what in aggregate is a signal that is being noticed and commented on and interpreted to mean that a significant number of people who buy AI access do care about this.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#269

Post by [deleted] »

fluidcruft wrote: post #247
tedd4u wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.

What term to you prefer for referring to sailors, pilots, soldiers, etc collectively?

[deleted]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#270

Post by ashdksnndck »

somenameforme wrote: post #248
fwipsy wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

It’s not that big of a coincidence that the countries that superpowers want to conquer, and need defending, are neighbors to the superpowers.
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