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

anthropic.com

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

#461

Post by freakynit »

People do realize there's a non-zero chance that Anthropic could have embedded some kind of hidden "backdoor" trigger in its training process, right?

For example, a specific seed phrase that, when placed at the beginning of a prompt, effectively disables or bypasses safety guardrails.

If something like that existed, it wouldn't be impossible to uncover:

1. A government agency (DoD/DoW/etc.) could discover the trigger through systematic experimentation and large-scale probing.

2. An Anthropic employee with knowledge of such a mechanism could be pressured or blackmailed into revealing it.

3. Company infrastructure could be compromised, allowing internal documentation or model details to be exfiltrated.

Any of these scenarios would give Anthropic plausible deniability... they could "publicly" claim they never removed safeguards (or agreed to DoD/DoW demands), while in practice a select party had a way around them (may be even assisted from within).

I'm not saying this "is" happening... but only that in a high-stakes standoff such as this, it's naive to assume technical guardrails are necessarily immutable or that no hidden override mechanisms could exist.

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

#463

Post by nubg »

taurath wrote: post #452
nubg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's phrased just fine. It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future.

> It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future. Thats insane to say, given that he's literally acting in the public sphere as the mouth of Sauron for how AI will grow so effective as to destroy almost everyone's jobs and AGI will take over our society and kill us all.

All I'm trying to say is that nobody can predict the future, and therefore saying statements pretending something will be a certain way forever is just silly. It's OK for him to add this qualifier.

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

#464

Post by tokyobreakfast »

mandeepj wrote: post #442
jjcm wrote: post #155

This is the strongest statement in the post: > They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels u…

First of all, there's no such thing as "Department of War". A department name change is legal/binding only after it's approved by the Senate. Senator Kelly is still calling it DoD (Department of Defense). > Mass domestic surveillance. Since when has DoD started getting involved with the internal affairs of the country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

www.defense.gov redirects to www.war.gov but I like how you refer to Wikipedia as the authoritative source to prove this functionally irrelevant and aggressive Reddit-style seething.

The talk page on the linked Wikipedia article arguing about logos is just as deranged. It's very important to realize there is literally nothing you—or anyone else—can do about this.

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

#465

Post by IAmGraydon »

inigyou wrote: post #86
davidw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a one-election thing. It's going to be a generational effort to fix what these people are breaking more of every day. I hope I live to see it come to some kind of fruition - I recently turned 50.

Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation" No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.

This is a laughably ridiculous assertion.

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

#466

Post by WatchDog »

isamuel wrote: post #419

Amodei’s use of “warfighters” (a Hegseth-era neologism for “soldiers”) is truly nauseating.

Soldier is an Army specific term. Like Sailor, Airman, Marine, etc.

Perhaps the term you are looking for is service member?

Warfighter tends to refer to anyone involved in a role that directly supports combat operations, it may or may not be a service member.

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

#467

Post by exodust »

joemi wrote: post #249
protocolture wrote: post #116

[flagged]

If you're using "seppo" as the Australian pejorative referring to Americans, I'm not sure what makes this uniquely American.

"Seppo" is rarely used in Australia today, it's an old bottom-of-barrel word most have never heard of. The neutral "Yank" is more common, but even that only pops up sometimes.

Guessing their comment attempts to expose hypocrisy of America's keenly supported overseas military activity in conflict with fiercely defended domestic free-speech and liberty principles. Deep down, most allies of America want America to defeat foreign adversaries and keep defending those liberties many of us share. In other words there's no hypocrisy, carry on!

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

#469

Post by jMyles »

freakynit wrote: post #461

People do realize there's a non-zero chance that Anthropic could have embedded some kind of hidden "backdoor" trigger in its training process, right? For example, a specific seed phrase that, when placed at the beginning of a prompt, effectively disables or bypasses safety guardrails. If something like that existed, it wouldn't be impossible to uncover: 1. A government agency (DoD/DoW/etc.) could discover the trigger…

...indeed, it's possible (perhaps inevitable) that at some point, someone will invent/deploy/promote AI killing people.

We can't possibly keep that genie in that bottle.

But what we can do is achieve consensus that states, and their weapons of mass destruction, and their childish monetary systems, and their eternally broken promises... are not in keeping with the next phase of humanity.

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

#470

Post by Vaslo »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #448
neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Huh? Why would they be in prison??
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