Live data from Hacker News

Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

41–50 of 862 posts

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#41
> I apologize for the tone of the post

What a world we live in now where private companies are apologising for the "tone" of their speech while official representatives of the government daily express blatant lies and misrepresentations without the slightest fear of consequence.

It really is incredibly sad that what was one of the most respected countries in the world has descended to this - an utter mockery of a functioning democracy.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#43

DoD still has not meaningfully moved to the DoW moniker, to me it represents the most fascist tendency, to make announcements and presume that’s enough to change the truth on the ground. The legal entity one contracts with is DoD. Going along with “DoW” is signal to me that a party has capitulated to the most absurd form of governance.

Pragmatically, it's for the best to use its preferred name instead of legal name when sucking up to the department and Trump to try to get back in good graces.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#44
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…

[deleted]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#45
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…

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.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#46
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…

[flagged]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#47
post #35
post #22

> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations. > we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition i…

It’s a mistake to conflate “wants to spend money on the most ethical option available” with “ think the most ethical option available is perfect” Why wouldn’t you move your dollars to someplace incrementally better?

You make it sound as if "the most ethical option available" is.. actually ethical?

Their statement doesn't make it sound they are incrementally better, they are trying to bend over backwards to keep working for war.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#48
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…

Reminds me of the story of someone's woman working for a research lab to improve the computer-controlled automatic emergency landings of planes with total power failure.

... or so she was told.

She was unknowingly designing glide-bomb avionics.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#49
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…

Military isn't quite as aggressively catering to the people who historically have bullied techies as they used to. Aside from that - there's a lot more people in tech now. It grew too fast too quick to maintain all the values it had back in the 00's and earlier.

[flagged]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#50
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…

God bless you for referencing that film.
Post reply on HN