Where things stand with the Department of War • Hacker News Board

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#321

Post by atomic_reed » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:03 AM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #294

regularization wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China. Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would b…

Actually dinosaurs existed in China before there were people. And their descendents, the birds, are still around. We should all consider it our moral duty to continue what was begun in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and overthrow the CCP and replace them with the true historical rulers, the chicken.

[dead]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#322

Post by godelski » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:05 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #40

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 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. (spoiler alert) Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius ? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far…

Same with Ender's Game. They are playing war games but they're actually real. He sacrifices his units and commits genocide (xenocide) at the same time. Something he probably wouldn't have done had he known.

  > Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...

My undergrad wasn't in CS but my grad was. I was incredibly surprised to find that ethics isn't a requirement in most CS programs. That's a sharp contrast to traditional engineering and the hard sciences. CS people seem to love philosophy, yet I'm surprised not so much about this subset. We'll spend all day talking about if we live in a simulation (without learning physics) and what intelligence is (without studying neuroscience or psychology) but when it comes to what's acceptable to do at work the answer is always "if I don't do it somebody else will, at least I'll have a job". A phrase that surely everyone hears in an ethics 101 class...

Edit:

Oops, missed pazimzadeh's comment. I'll leave mine because I say more

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#323

Post by burgreblast » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:05 AM UTC

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…

But ma, look at our stonk price!

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#324

Post by rokhayakebe » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:05 AM UTC

sgustard wrote: post #65

simonw wrote: post #12

Raised an eyebrow a little at this sentence: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."

Would love to enumerate those commonalities. Run by a psychopath? Commitment to violent lethality? Burning billions of dollars for uncertain goals? (ok there's one)

They have the same what and why, but they don't agreee on the how.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#325

Post by mckn1ght » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:05 AM UTC

jadar wrote: post #299

fadesibert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are waiting until undergraduate level to take ethics, it's far too late to matter anyways. Doubly so for "business ethics" classes which became à la mode in the post-Enron era. They attempt to teach fundamental ethics, when at most it should be a very thin layer on top of a well founded internal moral framework and well-accepted ethical standards inculcated from day 1 of kindergarten. Morals are taught 0-9 [0]…

[flagged]

You don’t need religion for ethics or worldview. How about: we all appear here on this rock, none of us know why, we’re all in it together, we all struggle, none of us know if we’re alone in this universe or what the universe really is. This unifies us all and puts us on an even playing field. We should be compassionate to one another as we all come from the same circumstance. We can create a concept of god to explain it, or accept that we don’t know for sure and maybe never will. God is a choice, but not the only one.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#326

Post by mindslight » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:07 AM UTC

sirnicolaz wrote: post #297

arczyx wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly do they want to use an llm for autonomous weapons Probably the same way Claude can play Pokemon: give it a bunch of informations and let it make a decision by itself to achieve a specified goal.

One thing is playing Pokemon, one thing is decide who to kill. Also: if they are planning to use it on the field, there is going to be a velocity issue. Claude and any other LLM require a non negligible amount of time to ingest the input and spit the output.

You seem to be under a mistaken impression that there is some good faith and competence here. Fascists don't give a shit about accuracy. Collateral damage actually increases the fear of being mistakenly caught up and encourages those at risk to loudly support the Party hoping it will protect them.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#327

Post by _2d30 » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:08 AM UTC

nickvec wrote: post #4

Not sure why Dario apologized for the internal memo leak. Seems like an odd thing to backtrack on.

Because optically it makes him look terrible.

One of the things that Altman does great is that when he writes he writes as though it will be read by the public every time. It’s why he is able to constantly post his own internal memos/posts on twitter. It’s great too because it makes him look “transparent”.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#328

Post by godelski » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:09 AM UTC

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…

  > Beavis and Butthead, ... Office Space

Mike Judge still does. Serendipitously there's a show called Silicon Valley... I also enjoyed the more recent Common Side Effects. But you even see it in King of the Hill and it's hard to miss in Idiocracy.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#329

Post by IAmGraydon » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:09 AM UTC

What do we think are the chances that the government is attempting to destroy Anthropic’s value so they can buy it for pennies on the dollar?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#330

Post by the_af » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 5:09 AM UTC

randerson wrote: post #88

jmward01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.

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…

> the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.

Not so clear cut. Because now sending people to die in distant wars is likely to get a negative reaction at home, this creates some sort of impediment for waging war. Sometimes not enough, but it's not nothing. Sending your boys to die for fuck knows what.

If you're just sending AI powered drones, it reduces the threshold for war tremendously, which in my mind is not "the moral choice".

All of this assuming AI is as good as humans.