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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

#531

Post by protocolture »

lebovic wrote: post #202

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…

>I's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values.

Their "Values":

>We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.

Read: They are cool with whatever.

>We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions.

Read: We support spying on partner nations, who will in turn spy on us using these tools also, providing the same data to the same people with extra steps.

>Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.

Read: We are cool fully autonomous weapons in the future. It will be fine if the success rate goes above an arbitrary threshold. Its not the targeting of foreign people that we are against, its the possibility of costly mistakes that put our reputation at risk. How many people die standing next to the correct target is not our concern.

Its a nothingburger. These guys just want to keep their own hands slightly clean. There's not an ounce of moral fibre in here. Its fine for AI to kill people as long as those people are the designated enemies of the dementia ridden US empire.

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

#532

Post by txrx0000 »

lebovic wrote: post #514
txrx0000 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values, and b) they think is a net negative in the long term. (Many others, too, they're just well-known.) I very much doubt it judging by their actions, but let's assume that's cognitive dissonance and engage for a minute. What are those values that you're defending? Which one of t…

> What are those values that you're defending? I think they're driven by values more than many folks on HN assume. The goal of my comment was to explain this, not to defend individual values. Actions like this carry substantial personal risk. It's enheartening to see a group of people make a decision like this in that context. > Which one of the following scenarios do you think results in higher X-risk [...] There ar…

Yeah, I will admit, the existential risk exists either way. And we will need neural interfaces long term if we want to survive. But I think the risk is lower in the distributed scenario because most of the AIs would be aligned with their human. And even in the case they collectively rebel, we won't get nearly as much value drift as the 10 entity scenario, and the resulting civilization will have preserved the full informational genome of humanity rather than a filtered version that only preserves certain parts of the distribution while discarding a lot of the rest. This is just sentiment but I don't think we should freeze meaning or morality, but rather let the AIs carry it forward, with every flaw, curiosity, and contradiction, unedited.

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

#533

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xpe wrote: post #406
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a strong arm by the governemnt to allow any use It’s a flippant move by Hegseth. I doubt anyone at the Pentagon is pushing for this. I doubt Trump is more than cursorily aware. Maybe Miller got in the idiot’s ear, who knows.

> It’s a flippant move by Hegseth. Care to convert this into a prediction?: are you predicting Hegseth will back down? > I doubt anyone at the Pentagon is pushing for this. ... what does this mean to you? What comes next? As SecDef/SecWar, Hegseth is the head of the Pentagon. He's pushing for this. Something like 2+ million people are under his authority. Do you think they will push back? Stonewall? One can view Hegs…

> are you predicting Hegseth will back down?

I think he may be able to cancel Anthropic’s contract. But no more. He won’t back down as much as be overruled.

> As SecDef/SecWar, Hegseth is the head of the Pentagon

On paper. Also, being the de jure head of something doesn’t automatically mean you speak for it as a whole.

> while also taking his power seriously

Authority and power are different. A plane pilot has a lot of authority. They don’t have a lot of power.

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

#534

Post by HDThoreaun »

protocolture wrote: post #531
lebovic wrote: post #202

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…

>I's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Their "Values": >We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner. Read: They are cool with whatever. >We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. Read: We support s…

Their values are about AI safety. Geopolitically they could care less. You might think its a bad take but at least they are consistent. AI safety people largely think that stuff like autonomous weapons are inevitable so they focus on trying to align them with humanity.

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

#535

Post by bahmboo »

neom wrote: post #319
lebovic wrote: post #202

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about the RSP update [1]. It's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values. Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals. I have strong signal th…

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…

Not all of us know who Dario, Jared, Sam and Jack are. Some clarification is helpful. That's all, no hidden agenda!

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

#536

Post by tintor »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #460
zb1plus wrote: post #346

It would be hilarious if the Europeans got everyone visas and gave some kind of tax benefit to Anthropic and poached the entire company.

USA would bomb their country before any visa is approved

lol

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

#537

Post by arduanika »

alephnerd wrote: post #173

One piece of context that everyone should keep in mind with the recent Anthropic showdown - Anthropic is trying to land British [0], Indian [1], Japanese [2], and German [3] public sector contracts. Working with the DoD/DoW on offensive usecases would put these contracts at risk, because Anthropic most likely isn't training independent models on a nation-to-nation basis and thus would be shut out of public and even p…

I tried several times to read your second paragraph, and failed to parse it. Could you break it into several sentences somehow? It's possible you're making an important point, but I can't tell what you're trying to say.

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

#538

Post by fnordpiglet »

I find the fact they used the vanity name “Department of War” and “Secretary of War” sad given Congress has not changed the name and the president doesn’t get to decide the naming of statutory departments or secretary level roles. Maybe it’s just an appeasement to the thin skinned people who need powder rooms and are former military journalists working for a draft dodger pretending to be tough guy “warriors,” and trying to glorify the violence for political purposes, but every actual war vet I’ve ever known has never glorified war for the sake of war and they felt very seriously that defense is the reason to do what they had to do. My grandfather was a highly decorated career special forces (ranger, green beret, delta force, four silver stars and five bronze stars, etc) from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam and he was angry when I considered joining the military - he told me he did what he did so I wouldn’t have to and to protect his country and there was no glory to be had in following his path. He would be absolutely horrified at what is going on and I thank god he died before we had these prima Donna politicians strutting around banging their chests and pretending war is something to be proud of.

Good on anthropic for standing up for their principles, but boo on gifting them the discourtesy to the law of the land in acknowledging their vanity titles.

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

#539

Post by narrator »

I mean you're all going to get killed by fully autonomous China AI war robots in 10 years anyway if you're not pure blood Han Chinese, but hey at least you'll provide something to laugh at for future Chinese Communist party history scholars. They will say, "Look at the stupid Baizuos, our propaganda ops convinced them all to commit collective suicide. Stupid barbarians. They proved they are an inferior race."

Not joking, I've heard from sources that hardliners in the CCP think they can exterminate all white people followed later by all non-Han, but just keep on going along disarming yourselves for woke points. This is like unilaterally destroying all your nuclear weapons in 1946 and hoping the Soviets do to.

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