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

311–320 of 1001 posts

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

#311

Post by dragonwriter »

noosphr wrote: post #294
alangibson wrote: post #4

It's not named the Department of War because Congress didn't rename it. Other than that, good on ya.

And what if congress renames it tomorrow? They have the votes. These sort of procedural gotchas are as stupid as they are boring.

> And what if congress renames it tomorrow?

Then tomorrow it will be the Department of War. Just like When Congress voted to split the old Department of War into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, and to take both of those and the previously-separate Department of the Navy under a new National Military Establishment led by the newly-created Secretary of Defense (and when it later to voted to rename the NME as “Department of Defense”), things changed in the past.

> They have the votes.

Perhaps, but the law doesn't change because the votes are in a whip count on a hypothetical change, it changes because they are actually cast on a bill making a concrete change.

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

#312

Post by sheeshkebab »

scottyah wrote: post #276
ramoz wrote: post #110

All completely rationale. Makes the us military here look fairly incompetent… embarrassing as a veteran.

I'm sure it's negotiations over how the enforcement will be done. My thoughts are: 1. Military wants a whole new model training system because the current models are designed to have these safeguards, and Anthropic can't afford that (would slow them down too much, the engineering talent to set up and maintain another pipeline would be a lot of work/time) 2. Military doesn't want to supply Anthropic usage data or pers…

It’s probably something really dumb, and they irked California billionaire with their idiocy.

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

#313

Post by ypeterholmes »

flumpcakes wrote: post #20

This is such a depressing read. What is becoming of the USA? Let's hope sanity prevails and the next election cycle can bring in some competent non-grievance based leadership.

The current situation in the US is the depressing thing- articles like this give me hope. Real Americans aren't having these BS authoritarian violations of our constitutional rights.

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

#314

Post by rafark »

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…

I said exactly this a few days ago elsewhere. It’s disappointing that they (and often other American companies) seem to restrict their “respect” and morals to Americans only. Or maybe it’s just semantics or context because the topic at hand is about americans? I don’t know but it gives “my people are more important than your people”, exactly as you said in your last paragraph

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

#316

Post by wiltsecarpenter »

Oh dear, what a mess of a statement that is. He wants to use AI "to defeat our autocratic adversaries", just what or who are they exactly? Claude seems to think they are Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Is Claude really a tool to "defeat" these countries somehow? This statement also seems pretty messy: "Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions.", well then just how do they think Claude is going to be used there if not to make or help make military decisions?

The statement goes on about a "narrow set of cases" of potential harm to "democratic values", ...uh, hmm, isn't the potential harm from a government controlled by rapists (Hegseth) and felons using powerful AI against their perceived enemies actually pretty broad? I think I could come up with a few more problem areas than just the two that were listed there, like life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.

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

#317

Post by wrqvrwvq »

ricardobeat wrote: post #147
helaoban wrote: post #106

All of these problems are downstream of the Congress having thoroughly abdicated its powers to the executive. The military should be reigned in at the legislative level, by constraining what it can and cannot do under law. Popular action is the only way to make that happen. Energy directed anywhere else is a waste. Private corporations should never be allowed to dictate how the military acts. Such a thought would be…

> The technology can just be requisitioned During a war with national mobilization, that would make sense. Or in a country like China. This kind of coercion is not an expected part of democratic rule.

It has always been a part of democratic rule, in peacetime and war. All telco's share virtually all of their technology with the government. Governments in europe and elsewhere routinely requisition services from many of their large corporations. I think it's absurd to think llm's can meaningfully participate in realworld cmd+ctrl systems and the government already has access to ml-enhanced targeting capabilities. I really have no idea what dod normies think of ai, other than that it's infinitely smarter than them, but that's not saying much.

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

#319

Post by neom »

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 had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go to jail/shut down/whatever before they do something objectively wrong.

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

#320

Post by dragonwriter »

ReptileMan wrote: post #54
alangibson wrote: post #4

It's not named the Department of War because Congress didn't rename it. Other than that, good on ya.

Less hypocritical than Defense. US has never been on the defense, always offense since it was renamed in 1947.

The Department of Defense was named in 1949, not 1947, and the thing that it was renamed from was the National Military Establishment, which was newly created in 1947 to be put over the two old military departments (War, which was over the Army only, and Navy, which was over the Navy including the Marine Corps)

At the same time as the NME was created, the Army was split into the Army and Air Force and the Department of War was also split in two, becoming the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force.

Post reply on HN