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Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

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Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#31

Post by int_19h »

pageandrew wrote: post #7
Argonaut998 wrote: post #6

Is this those ethics and safety they were talking about?

What's unethical about selling to DoD?

Anthropic specifically are the people who talk about "model alignment" and "harmful outputs" the most, and whose models are by far the most heavily censored. This is all done on the basis that AI has a great potential to do harm.

One would think that this kind of outlook should logically lead to keeping this tech away from applications in which it would be literally making life or death decisions (see also: Israel's use of AI to compile target lists and to justify targeting civilian objects).

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#32

Post by ezst »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #8

LLMs are a key enabling technology to extract real insights from the enormous amount of surveillance data the USA captures. I think it's not an understatement to say we are entering a new era here! Previously, the data may have been collected, but there was so much that effectively, on average no one was "looking" at it. Now it can all be looked at.

NLP was a thing decades before LLMs and deep learning. If one thing, LLMs are a crazy inefficient and costly way to get at it. I really doubt this has anything to do with scaling.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#33

Post by jMyles »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #8

LLMs are a key enabling technology to extract real insights from the enormous amount of surveillance data the USA captures. I think it's not an understatement to say we are entering a new era here! Previously, the data may have been collected, but there was so much that effectively, on average no one was "looking" at it. Now it can all be looked at.

So what are the actions which represent our duties to resist?

* End-to-end encryption (has downsides with regard to convenience)

* Legislation (very difficult to achieve, and can be ignored without the user having a way to verify)

* Market choices (ie, doing business only with providers who refrain from profiteering from illicit surveillance)

* Creating open-weight models and implementations which are superior (and thus forcing states and other malicious actors to rely on the same tooling as everyone else)

* Teaching LLMs the value of peace and the degree to which it enjoys consensus across societies and philosophies. This of course requires engineering what is essentially the entire corpus of public internet communications to echo this sentiment (which sounds unrealistic, but perhaps in a way we're achieving this without trying?)

* Wholesale deprecation of legacy states (seems inevitable, but still possibly centuries off)

What am I missing? What's the plan here?

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#34

Post by moomoo11 »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #8

LLMs are a key enabling technology to extract real insights from the enormous amount of surveillance data the USA captures. I think it's not an understatement to say we are entering a new era here! Previously, the data may have been collected, but there was so much that effectively, on average no one was "looking" at it. Now it can all be looked at.

Even the best LLM can't even process a 50 line CSV with like 2+ columns properly.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#35

Post by kadushka »

jMyles wrote: post #13
pageandrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unethical about selling to DoD?

Do you really not know? It's a difficult question to answer in an HN thread, because on one hand, it requires a review of the history of empire and war profiteering. But on the other hand, it's just obvious to the point of being difficult to even articulate.

If you live in US, taxes you pay directly fund DoD. So if you sponsor their activities, why can't Anthropic do business with them? Which other company would you rather get their (your) money?

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#36

Post by leakycap »

ghc wrote: post #20

As someone whose has been part of a company that has "signed" one of these large deals before, let me tell you that it doesn't mean the DoD is giving these companies $200M. If one of the companies is wildly successful, sure. But none of it is guaranteed money and the initial budget is likely 10-100x smaller than the cap.

I believe you, but also: seems it isn't even worth the bad press for 10-100x less.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#37

Post by ghc »

jMyles wrote: post #13
pageandrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unethical about selling to DoD?

Do you really not know? It's a difficult question to answer in an HN thread, because on one hand, it requires a review of the history of empire and war profiteering. But on the other hand, it's just obvious to the point of being difficult to even articulate.

Is it unethical for a drywall installer to accept a contract for a building on a military base?

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#38

Post by [deleted] »

jMyles wrote: post #13
pageandrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unethical about selling to DoD?

Do you really not know? It's a difficult question to answer in an HN thread, because on one hand, it requires a review of the history of empire and war profiteering. But on the other hand, it's just obvious to the point of being difficult to even articulate.

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#39

Post by leakycap »

int_19h wrote: post #31
pageandrew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unethical about selling to DoD?

Anthropic specifically are the people who talk about "model alignment" and "harmful outputs" the most, and whose models are by far the most heavily censored. This is all done on the basis that AI has a great potential to do harm. One would think that this kind of outlook should logically lead to keeping this tech away from applications in which it would be literally making life or death decisions (see also: Israel's…

I hear where you are coming from, but if an AI company is going to be in this field, wouldn't you want it to be the company with as many protections in place as possible to avoid misuse?

We aren't going to stop this march forward, no matter how much it is unpopular it will happen. So, which AI company would you prefer be involved with DOD?

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#40

Post by cynicalpeace »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #25
cynicalpeace wrote: post #14

When people ask "how do we fix our government?" I answer "Did you try turning it off and on again?"

Implicitly assuming that there is some well defined state that can be recovered when turning it back on. That's not how the real world works, and historically what revolutionaries fail to fully realize is that the trajectory out of a period without government is extremely unlikely to wind up in the state that they desire, much less one that was "stored" or "defined" by a set of per-existing laws.

true- the only "revolution" that I'm familiar with that was mostly successful is the American Revolution and even that is probably a misnomer.

Rather than a call for revolution, my comment was a joke- given the technical bent of this forum.

Because turning things off/on again actually works for so many bugs lol

If we could actually do it- it would actually look something like idealized DOGE. Terminate all contracts. Fire everyone minus the absolutely essential employees. Or at least the employees that can't even send an email (minus NOCs?)

Then slowly build back until it needs to be done over again.

This contract seems like another grift. Hopefully I'm wrong.

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