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

Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 862 posts

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#311

Post by komali2 »

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]

People keep making this strange claim about Taiwan, the only liberal democracy in the East without a single American soldier on its soil.

Almost like Taiwan is a sovereign nation uninterested in participating in the PRC and USA's fight for global hegemony.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#312

Post by pinnochio »

bigyabai wrote: post #213
pinnochio wrote: post #68

[flagged]

...is Anthropic "meaningfully better" though? They're still fine being a defense contractor, and they lack the tools to enforce the ethics they want to uphold. They seemingly contribute even less to FOSS than OpenAI does (low bar) and split hairs over IP ownership when open models distill their results. Am I supposed to root for them because of their manufactured internet drama? It's very reminiscent of the half-asse…

I don't advocate for using either OpenAI or Anthropic. But you can say one is better while both are still unacceptable.

I don't see a viable case for arguing that they're equally bad, though you might quibble over the difference. (I couldn't care less how much these companies contribute to FOSS--that's small potatoes compared to everything else that's going on.)

My point is there are a lot of people invested in OpenAI's success who try to steer opinion around here, and they use arguments about ethics (or raise an eyebrow) for those purposes, not because they actually care about the ethics.

There was a rush of people flooding this thread to paint this post as new evidence against Amodei, when he's been upfront and consistent on these matters for a while. That doesn't mean anyone has to agree with him. But there's nothing new about his stance here. People suggesting that there is tells you what their motives are.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#313

Post by komali2 »

dotancohen wrote: post #277
fwip wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safe for the aggressors, I mean. If war is easy and cheap for us to wage, we will do more of it, and likely make the world a worse place.

Your post reads as if you would rather those aggressors who threaten America to not be disposed of. How is the world a better place with the aggressors than without?

We're talking about Americans.

What genuine threat did Venezuela or Iran pose to Americans? Corporate interests don't count.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#314

Post by khazhoux »

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…

Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but I'm having a hard time feeling bad we took out the Ayatollah. You know, what with him killing tens of thousands of Iranians who demanded reform. I didn't care one bit for him doing that.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#315

Post by the_af »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #287
BryantD wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in Good Will Hunting , when Will (Matt Damon) delivers a scathing job rejection to the NSA. 1997. The War on Terror has a lot to answer for. https://youtu.be/tH0bTpwQL7U

The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character w…

You're right.

And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun).

Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have happened before the first Transformers, but it was in full swing by then.

Were one of a conspiratorial mind, one would guess massive amounts of money were spent in changing this image.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#316

Post by jmward01 »

singron wrote: post #235
randerson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk. Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fi…

It's sort of like the opposite of this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_(academic)#Preven... > Fisher [...] suggested implanting the nuclear launch codes in a volunteer. If the President of the United States wanted to activate nuclear weapons, he would be required to kill the volunteer to retrieve the codes. >> [...] The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the P…

There should be two knives so the volunteer can defend themselves if they don't think starting a war is worth it.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#317

Post by mindslight »

SoftTalker wrote: post #173
ryandrake wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened. Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.

> They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone Or who simply had a different point of view than you.

Yes, a point of view without an ethical backbone, at least in the context of American society. I suppose they could be a Chinese or Russian national considering it ethical to harm the United States, but I don't see a point of drawing that distinction.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#319

Post by sodality2 »

the_af wrote: post #315
hax0ron3 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character w…

You're right. And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun). Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have ha…

No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends, and it went undiscovered for four decades. The original Top Gun was intended to recover the image of the US Navy after the Vietnam War. Etc etc etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#320

Post by rokhayakebe »

Rohunyyy wrote: post #203
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…

See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kil…

Well you cannot be responsible for adults' discernment or their critical thinking. If those same ads are being shown to children that would be different.
Post reply on HN