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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

#481

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Most of the pranks in Real Genius were actual pranks done at Caltech in the 1970s. The McDonald's prank, for example.

I don't recall Caltech having any ethics classes. Caltech did have an honor system, however, which was surprisingly effective.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#482

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war

I don't want to be stuck with horses when the enemy is invading with tanks.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#483

Post by carlob »

saulpw wrote: post #105
randerson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 danger is that we won't be sending these fully-autonomous drones to 'war', but anytime a person in power feels like assassinating a leader or taking out a dissident, without having to make a big deal out of it. The reality is that AI will be used, not merely as a weapon, but as an accountability sink.

> 'war'

> anytime a person in power feels like assassinating a leader or taking out a dissident

I don't really see much of a difference nowadays

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#484

Post by keiferski »

WalterBright wrote: post #477
keiferski wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many prominent tech and science leaders have been disparaging philosophy for decades now. Not surprising that in the absence of any serious ethical thought, “make money = good” is the default position.

[flagged]

Sometimes I really don’t know how to reply to comments like these. Because they either seem to completely misunderstand the basic premise of my comment, or they deliberately focus on some tangential thing in order to make some trollish point. But I’ll reply here, and just assume my comment was somehow unclear.

Do you genuinely think that putting money above any other value is an ethical way to operate in the world? I certainly don’t, virtually no ethical theory does, and the vast majority of people don’t either.

This is not saying that making money is inherently a bad thing, but that placing it above every other value without question is definitely a bad thing, or at least a careless and thoughtless one.

To use your example: all sorts of things are in demand but unquestionably make the world worse. Does the fact that people are willing to pay for propaganda or chemical weapons or X other negative thing somehow mean that facilitating their sale is ethical? I really don’t understand the position.

I suppose there are some people out there who seriously have studied ethics and think making money is the ultimate good. It doesn’t seem like a serious position to me.

But I don’t think that’s become the default position because of serious analysis, but rather the total lack of it. Which is what my comment was about: when you refuse to engage in serious philosophical thought about something, you’re just going to revert to base values like the acquisition of money and power, or some variant of that which your local system is optimizing for.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#485

Post by delaminator »

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…

Students are idealistic. The real world has a habit of blunting that.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#486

Post by WalterBright »

keiferski wrote: post #484
WalterBright wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sometimes I really don’t know how to reply to comments like these. Because they either seem to completely misunderstand the basic premise of my comment, or they deliberately focus on some tangential thing in order to make some trollish point. But I’ll reply here, and just assume my comment was somehow unclear. Do you genuinely think that putting money above any other value is an ethical way to operate in the world? I…

[flagged]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#487

Post by egorfine »

One of the not-so-subtle ways we know a person is a supporter of russia's war in Ukraine is when they refer to it as "Special Military Operation".

That begs the following question: why does Dario Amodei repeatedly call the Department of Defense "Department of War"?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#488

Post by keiferski »

WalterBright wrote: post #486
keiferski wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I really don’t know how to reply to comments like these. Because they either seem to completely misunderstand the basic premise of my comment, or they deliberately focus on some tangential thing in order to make some trollish point. But I’ll reply here, and just assume my comment was somehow unclear. Do you genuinely think that putting money above any other value is an ethical way to operate in the world? I…

[flagged]

Then I don’t understand the point of your initial comment or what you’re trying to say.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#489

Post by qsera »

laserlight wrote: post #423
qsera wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, any one can say anything. But I am not referring to that. I am talking about a case where it is objectively true. But I think that is a question that anyone would rather not consider. The issue is that if you don't consider that question, and jump into discussion or actions, in general just have an "outrage", then it would be very hard to take you seriously.

I don't know of any instance where modern warmongers fight wars based on subjective grounds. They all have “objectively true” reasons.

Imagine you are stranded in your home with all your loved ones, and you get a call from your "warmonger" president and the matter is urgent; he says "We have received intel regarding a enemy plan to bomb your house in 30 mins. This report is only x% reliable, but we have the exact location of the enemy and we have birds in air that can hit them in 5 mins. This might escalate into a larger conflict, Do you want us to proceed? "

What would your response be? What is the value of `x` at which you will approve of the pre-emptive attack?

Just curious.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#490

Post by pazimzadeh »

randallsquared wrote: post #290
pazimzadeh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also relevant to Ender's Game, which came out 8 months before Real Genius

Ender's Game the novel, but I would say that it's not actually super relevant. First, the original short story was 1977, and then Card expanded it into a novel which was published mid-1980s. The point in the story is that kids are sensitive, and supergenius kids more so, and that they don't want to interrupt performance with concerns about guilt. But Real Genius wasn't about that! It was about an anti-war stance born…

Gotcha, I haven't actually seen the movie I just meant the concept of tricking and silo'ing genius kids to make them think they are playing a game when they're actually doing war/genocide is similar to the Ender's Game book. I don't know if this was just an idea floating around in the air or if it was inspired by Ender's Game, just interesting
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