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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#431

Post by scotty79 »

freshfunk wrote: post #181
shloosh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything has to be a conspiracy or some 4D chess business move. Dario is a morally motivated person and regretted the tone that was being conveyed in that memo, so he apologized.

Yeah, that's completely unbelievable. You don't just accidentally call Trump a "dictator" or go on an extended tirade about Sam Altman. Clearly, he was speaking how he truly felt and how he's doing damage control.

> he was speaking how he truly felt

People can speak how they truly feel and then regret the tone with zero cynicism.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#433

Post by nyargh »

I would say to you who would equivocate and dither about lending your skills to a morally and ethically compromised war machine in exchange for a fat paycheck, the same thing that I teach my children:

"Everything and I mean everything can be taken from you except your integrity, only you can give that up"

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#435

Post by kortilla »

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…

You still take ethics. The only difference is political views. It’s very easy to be consistent from an ethical perspective if you are convinced of a government’s particular powers.

The government has a monopoly on violence. Whether you want to enhance it or not all comes down to your political alignment, not ethics.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#436

Post by kortilla »

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…

> Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.

With a gate keeping attitude like that, are you really surprised engineers don’t want to participate?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#437

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> My, the world has changed.

Revisionist history.

When you graduated in 2007, the leading tech companies were Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Apple, Intel, HP, Oracle, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.

How many refused DoD application of their products?

I only recall one -- Google. (And it actually first agreed to Project Maven before later backing out.)

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#438

Post by fasterik »

shevy-java wrote: post #415

Everyone knows that the companies have to comply, so a company trying to convince the public that they can choose to not comply, is just telling a lie. I don't understand why Anthropic tries damage control here. Why not just admit that all the data given to them, is also used for war-purposes? We currently see the build-up of a much larger warfare. These things are inter-connected. Even more so when some of it is don…

What do you mean they have to comply? If something was already in a contract they agreed to, sure. But there is nothing legally forcing private companies to do business with the DoD, short of the government forcibly nationalizing them.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#439

Post by kortilla »

nyargh wrote: post #433

I would say to you who would equivocate and dither about lending your skills to a morally and ethically compromised war machine in exchange for a fat paycheck, the same thing that I teach my children: "Everything and I mean everything can be taken from you except your integrity, only you can give that up"

Defense doesn’t pay better than regular tech. The people in defense are doing it because they believe in helping the govt.
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