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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

461–470 of 862 posts

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being blanket against CBP is a position without an ethical backbone. It’s just a childish burying head in the sand. Every semi stable country enforces its immigration laws and checks passports of visitors. Claiming the US doing so is somehow unethical is completely misaligned with a sustainable welfare and government services system.

The problem is not the roles, but how those roles are carried out and the complete lack of accountability. It's difficult for citizens to believe that government agencies are noble endeavors when we see ever-creeping anti-Constitutional scope, and rampant unpunished criminality among their members. It would be fantastic if this weren't the case, of course. Unfortunately the only check mechanic we the People seem to have is to consider them hostile entities best avoided until they're drastically reformed.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#462
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…

Do you seriously believe that your only alternative is to work building ads or weapons?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral. The only best choice is to fight at every turn making war easy. Our adversaries will, or likely already have, gone the autonomous route. We should be doing everything we can to put major blockers on this similar to efforts to block chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The logical end of autonomous targeting and weapons is near instant mass killing dec…

> War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral. This is the right answer. When war becomes inevitable, we are forced to choose between morality and survival. I pass no judgement on those who choose survival.

The problem in modern wars is that those who start them claim that they do this for survival, but the claim is not based on any real action of the adversary or on any evidence that the adversary is dangerous, but on beliefs that the adversary might want to endanger the survival of the attacker some time in an indefinite future, and perhaps might even be able to do that.

Nobody who starts a war today acknowledges that they do this for other reasons than "survival", e.g. for stealing various kinds of resources from the attacked.

It has become difficult to distinguish those who truly fight for survival from those who only claim to do this.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#464
Despite being arguably the leading frontier AI lab at the moment, Anthropic is punished for not following orders. Pete Hegseth now has the power to determine the economic policy of the US when it comes to AI. The US is becoming a state-planned economy in the worst possible way.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#466
post #371
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We deserve to know if Claude was involved with targeting the girls’ school that was bombed in the first hours of the attack on Iran. 50-100+ girls are reported to have been killed. Claude is integrated into Palantir’s Project Maven targeting system. The Pentagon has touted how many more targets they were able to attack with this system (1,000’s). NY Times: Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian…

Reuters now reporting "U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children" https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-investigation-p...

And nobody else because the geniuses at Reuters thought it was a good idea to make it an exclusive. Also paywalled.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#467
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…

I don't know what you're talking about. This is exactly as I remember things back in the Iraq war. With us or against us and all that.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#468
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the recently attacked countries posed an imminent threat to the US. In what kind of deranged world are we living that people are fighting against the notion that waging war on another country should be a costly decision !? My, the Overton window has indeed shifted far.

[flagged]

Trump has already claimed that he has destroyed all nuclear capability of Iran at the previous attack done by USA against Iran.

Claiming now that this other attack has the same purpose makes certain that USA has lied either at the previous attack or at the current attack.

When the government of a country is a proven liar, no allegations about how dangerous another country is are credible.

Moreover, just before the attack, during the negotiations between USA and Iran it was said that Iran accepted most of the new American requests regarding their nuclear capabilities, which had the goal to prevent them from making any weapons, but their willingness to make concessions did not help them at all to avoid a surprise attack before the end of the negotiations.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#469
post #458
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Gen-Xer I fully agree, I don't get the way things are with obedience, the rediculous situation that American families can lose their kids by having them playing alone in the garden, how everyone sells out for money (Punk would not happen today), the always smile and say no negatives at work being rediculous false (this one really drives me crazy),....

And yet Gen X is the demographic that fell hardest for Trump.

Was it? I am not on US.

If anything it is all about boomers, gen z and rednecks on YT and TikTok when going over MAGA and Project 2025 videos.

As far as I am aware, the people that didn't gave a damm to elections and ignored their right to vote, are the main reason.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#470

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…

The release date of the show 24 is fun.

My pet theory is that NYPD Blue and 24 paved the way in the American public mind for authoritarianism via the "good guys bending the rules and using violence because they know this guy did it" theme.
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