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

Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 461 posts

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#291

Post by wilg »

don_esteban wrote: post #290
ori_b wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you vote in the primaries for a candidate that might change it?

Did democrats offer primaries in the last elections? Did voting for Bernie Sanders in the last two primaries (especially the ones when Trump won for the first time) amount to anything? I wonder how long can the American public keep the self delusion that the elections are anything but a theater for the naive, to keep the pretense the public has any say in things that matter. How much has the current administration as…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presiden...

Skill issue. Run your candidate. Convince people to vote for them.

> How much has the current administration asked the public about going to war with Iran?

THE ELECTIONS are how the public weighs in.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#292

Post by Tanjreeve »

aardvarkr wrote: post #134
cheema33 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OAI conditions were basically "DoW won't do anything which violates the rules DoW sets for itself." I believe this understanding is correct. The issue many people have these days with Dept. of War, and most of Trump admin is that they have little respect for laws. They only follow the ones they like and openly ignore the ones that are inconvenient. Dept of "War" should have zero problems agreeing to the two conditi…

I don’t care who is in the whitehouse. Snowden revealed the crimes of the NSA in 2013 when Obama was president. They’re all going to want to use AI for mass surveillance

AI doesn't add anything to the ability to do mass surveillance. That genie was already out of the bottle from clouds and big data systems. At best AI might take on some of the gruntwork for drawing conclusions from profiles but it's doing it's usual thing of being a powerful interface built on top of other systems.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#293

Post by don_esteban »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #286
don_esteban wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: My conception is that the world would be a much simpler place if war was total. No one would start it unless it would be 200% it could win it Now apply the same logic to the current Iran war.

I do not see Iran winning this. The current government is also hated by the people who would very much like to see all of them dead. Al Jazeera has some very good insights into this, and the gist of it is: the Iranian regime is in a fight for its life with nothing to lose. If they are degraded enough, a revolution will start in Iran and they will be killed by the people. Or by US/IL bombs - whichever comes first. The…

OK, slowly:

The wars are already total for the weaker sides. See Ukraine/Iran. Did not stop the stronger side attacking.

You are advocating for no constraints (total war) on the stronger side. Taken literally, that means genocide of the losers. Really, that's what you want?

But yes, you are right, the world would be much simpler in such case - there will be no humans left. OK, maybe some hunter-gatherers.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#294

Post by don_esteban »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #286
don_esteban wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: My conception is that the world would be a much simpler place if war was total. No one would start it unless it would be 200% it could win it Now apply the same logic to the current Iran war.

I do not see Iran winning this. The current government is also hated by the people who would very much like to see all of them dead. Al Jazeera has some very good insights into this, and the gist of it is: the Iranian regime is in a fight for its life with nothing to lose. If they are degraded enough, a revolution will start in Iran and they will be killed by the people. Or by US/IL bombs - whichever comes first. The…

Regarding Iran's future:

You are describing Libya scenario, not a 'lived prosperously ever after'. There is no credible opposition in Iran to take the mantle.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#295

Post by vanillameow »

neya wrote: post #272
devinplatt wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW he gives his ethical reasoning on his website: > Broadly, I am supportive of arming democracies with the tools needed to defeat autocracies in the age of AI—I simply don’t think there is any other way. But we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves. Democracies normally have safeguards that prevent their military and intelligence apparatus from being turne…

Basically he's asking everyone to trust him that he won't cross the line himself. Whatever argument he makes for democracies applies to him as well, and he's not somehow above it. That's the flaw in his argument. Brutally honest, to me it just sounds like a very elaborate way to say "trust me, bro"

I would agree if not for the fact that they just let a $200M contract slip through over it. You could argue it's "safety theater" in itself but that seems like a risky gambit especially with this administration. I definitely trust Anthropic more than OpenAI. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's probably pretty imperative that Anthropic stays a frontrunner in this race and doesn't leave the field exclusively to OAI (and maybe Google which is just as bad). That doesn't mean I'm exactly happy with Anthropic's comments like "mass surveillance bad but only for the US". But Anthropic at least regularly asks questions about the direction of AI development. I haven't seen the other frontier model companies do any such thing.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#296

Post by thaumasiotes »

don_esteban wrote: post #293
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see Iran winning this. The current government is also hated by the people who would very much like to see all of them dead. Al Jazeera has some very good insights into this, and the gist of it is: the Iranian regime is in a fight for its life with nothing to lose. If they are degraded enough, a revolution will start in Iran and they will be killed by the people. Or by US/IL bombs - whichever comes first. The…

OK, slowly: The wars are already total for the weaker sides. See Ukraine/Iran. Did not stop the stronger side attacking. You are advocating for no constraints (total war) on the stronger side. Taken literally, that means genocide of the losers. Really, that's what you want? But yes, you are right, the world would be much simpler in such case - there will be no humans left. OK, maybe some hunter-gatherers.

> You are advocating for no constraints (total war) on the stronger side. Taken literally, that means genocide of the losers. Really, that's what you want?

Taken literally, it means genocide of the losers is an option the winning side has. It always has been.

Note that Genghis Khan's explicit plan when he conquered China was to wipe out the Chinese to make room for Mongols. He wasn't stopped from doing that; there was no constraint to block him.

But he was persuaded not to.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#297

Post by wasabi991011 »

don_esteban wrote: post #290
ori_b wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you vote in the primaries for a candidate that might change it?

Did democrats offer primaries in the last elections? Did voting for Bernie Sanders in the last two primaries (especially the ones when Trump won for the first time) amount to anything? I wonder how long can the American public keep the self delusion that the elections are anything but a theater for the naive, to keep the pretense the public has any say in things that matter. How much has the current administration as…

> Did voting for Bernie Sanders in the last two primaries (especially the ones when Trump won for the first time) amount to anything?

He didn't win the primaries though. It would have amounted to something if he got enough votes.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#298

Post by don_esteban »

wilg wrote: post #291
don_esteban wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did democrats offer primaries in the last elections? Did voting for Bernie Sanders in the last two primaries (especially the ones when Trump won for the first time) amount to anything? I wonder how long can the American public keep the self delusion that the elections are anything but a theater for the naive, to keep the pretense the public has any say in things that matter. How much has the current administration as…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presiden... Skill issue. Run your candidate. Convince people to vote for them. > How much has the current administration asked the public about going to war with Iran? THE ELECTIONS are how the public weighs in.

Re: Skill issue Money issue. This is not level playing ground, the field is severely tilted. The referee is bought.

But you are saying: You lost fair and square, wait 4 years to have any say in what is going on.

Re: THE ELECTIONS are how the public weighs in.

When the choice is between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the public's choice is meaningless.

To say nothing about politicians outright shamelessly lying (e.g. Trump campaigning on 'no more wars').

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#299

Post by Tanjreeve »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #286
don_esteban wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: My conception is that the world would be a much simpler place if war was total. No one would start it unless it would be 200% it could win it Now apply the same logic to the current Iran war.

I do not see Iran winning this. The current government is also hated by the people who would very much like to see all of them dead. Al Jazeera has some very good insights into this, and the gist of it is: the Iranian regime is in a fight for its life with nothing to lose. If they are degraded enough, a revolution will start in Iran and they will be killed by the people. Or by US/IL bombs - whichever comes first. The…

This is the same mistake as made in Iraq and Syria by media policy pundits. Dictatorial regimes collapse pretty quickly without a significant base of support enough to stop a revolution happening. They might not have a majority of people supporting but it isn't a democracy. Dictatorial regimes will always have one or more of military, business, or sub-groups of citizens in their pockets as clients.

Whenever we say "the regime is hated by it's people it will collapse" it should be asked "then why didn't it collapse already?". In Iran metropolitan areas are where you see opposition. That's also where people have cameras and media orgs tend to be. We get a warped depiction of opposition in Iran even without our own media's baggage. Meanwhile the power base of Iran is everywhere but metropolitan cities. And there's a lot of clients who benefit from the regime. I think this might be worse than the sectarian violence that came out of the Hussein regimes collapse because the Sunni sect his base was built around was still a minority. This time it's the majority and the people being fought against are the Americans, the Israelis and the Arabs so their backs are against the wall this is a total war already from their side.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

#300

Post by guitheengineer »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #211
DesaiAshu wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "just" a $200m contract, it's the start of a lucrative relationship 1. Stargate seemed to require a dedicated press conference by the President to achieve funding targets. Why risk that level of politicization if it didn't? 2. Greg Brockman donated $25mil to Trump MAGA Super PAC last year. Why risk so much political backlash for a low leverage return of $200m on $25m spent? 3. During WW2, military spend shot…

First, I have to say I loved your thoughtful & detailed comment. You have clearly considered this from the financial side; let me add some color from the perspective of someone working with frontier researchers. > As the "alignment" folks on the AI industry are likely to learn I will push back here. Dario & co are not starry-eyed naive idealists as implied. This is a calculated decision to maximize their goal (safe A…

that is considering if there will be elections, which many people don't believe it's the case.

reminder that trump has been flirting with just continuing in power (2028 hats and talks about a third term) and is responsible for trying a coup last time he lost.

personally I think there's a possibility where he'll just declare martial law and stay in power at the end of his term.

Post reply on HN