Props to Dario and Anthropic for taking a moral stand. A rarity in tech these days.
You know this is pure PR right?
If Anthropic is nationalized or declared a supply chain risk tomorrow, will you say the same?
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
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Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#552They are playing a good PR game for sure. Their recent track record doesn’t show if they can be trusted. Few millions is nothing for their current revenue and saying they sacrificed is a big stretch here.
It's much more than a few million? Being declared a supply chain risk means that no company that wants to do business with the government can buy Anthropic. And no company that wants to do business with those businesses can buy Anthropic either. This rules out pretty much all American corporations as customers?
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#553An organization character really shows through when their values conflict with their self-interest. It's inspiring to see that Anthropic is capable of taking a principled stand, despite having raised a fortune in venture capital. I don't think a lot of companies would have made this choice. I wish them the very best of luck in weathering the consequences of their courage.
The problem is that this is a decision that costs money. Relying on a system that makes money by doing bad things to do good things out of a sense of morality when a possible outcome is existential risk to the species is a 100% chance of failure on a long enough timeline. We need massive disincentives to bad behavior, but I think that cat is already out of its bag.
On a long enough timeline literally everything has 100% chance of failure. I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I just wanna say: we only got this one life and we have to choose what to make of it. Too many people pretend things are already laid out based on game theory "success". But that's not what it's about in life at all.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#554Earlier 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…
Not all of us know who Dario, Jared, Sam and Jack are. Some clarification is helpful. That's all, no hidden agenda!
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Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#555Brother in law did some "time with the brass" as he calls it. His take was that the DOD, er DOW would, as an example, never acquire a fighter jet that "wouldn't target and kill a civilian airliner", citing that on 9/11 we literally almost did that. The DOW is acquiring instruments of war, which is probably unconformable for a lot of people to consider. His conclusion was that the limits of use ought to be contractual…
> The DOW is acquiring instruments of war
that may be, but the bigger picture purpose of the military is, welfare republicans like. in that sense, republicans are in charge, republicans want stuff that isn't "woke" (or whatever), so this behavior is representative of the way it works.
it has little to do with acquiring instruments of war, or war at all. its mission keeps growing and growing, it has a huge mission, very little of that mission is combat. this is what their own leadership says (complains about). 999/1,000 people on its payroll are doing duty outside of combat or foreseeable combat.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#556I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…
If the United States is ever, in the future, at war with an adversary using truly autonomous and functional killing machines; you may find yourself praying that we have our own rather than praying human nature changes. Of course, we must strive for this to never happen; but carrying a huge stick seems to be the most effective way to reduce human death and suffering from armed conflict.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#557I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…
You gotta keep in mind that the primary goal of this statement is to avert the invocation of the defense production act.
He is trying to win sympathies even (or especially?) among nationalist hawks.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
mark my words, they will burn at some point. The government can nationalize it at any moment if they desire.
Then maybe Dario will realize that the moral superiority that he bases his advocacy against Chinese open models is naive at best.
Every day I hope the Chinese models get "good enough" to drop these corporate ones. I think we are heading towards it.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
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Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Consistency isn't a virtue. A guy who murders people at a consistent rate isn't better than a guy who murders people only on weekends.
>AI safety people largely think that stuff like autonomous weapons are inevitable so they focus on trying to align them with humanity.
Humanity includes the future victim of AI weapons.