How does Hegseth believe he's going to out maneuver the company with the best "AI" on earth? Anthropic will run circles around him.
If the gov does the "nuclear option" described on article, what do you think Anthropic's AI can do about it?
The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
61–70 of 137 posts
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#62Techno futurist: 1. Builds tool extremely capable of mass surveillance and running autonomous warfighting capabilities. 2. Expresses shock — shock — when the Department of War insists on using the tool for mass surveillance and autonomous warfighting systems.
1. The article points out Claude has resisted being trained for that. AI in general could, but Claude can not.
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incredibly dumb take considering Dario Amodei has been extremely hawkish on China and especially about selling them chips that may allow them to catch up to the US level of capabilities...
The Chinese models are 3, maybe 6 months behind Anthropic, they’re not that special.
So, two or three generations.
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#64So the Pentagon is strongarming a company into cooperation? That reminds of how my alcoholic neighbor used to treat his family. It's almost as if someone let a mean drunk be in charge of the Pentagon.
As if governments throughout history haven't constantly used threats to gain leverage? No need to take a personal shot at the guy in charge when this is SOP throughout the administration.
Guy is an unqualified alcoholic in charge of our safety. All shots are warranted.
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#65This is going to be a controversial take but I don't agree with Anthropic on this one. My gut instinct says that the Pentagon should back down, but my gut is wrong because of political bias. I can't claim to be serious about AI governance if Anthropic is able to sidestep the interests of the Pentagon, whoever might be in charge. Anthropic is not stronger than the US government, and it would set a dangerous precedent if they don't comply.
At the end of the rabbit hole, it's all about enforcement, regardless of the contract. Who's going to enforce Anthropic's terms and conditions if they betray the Pentagon?
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#66So the Pentagon is strongarming a company into cooperation? That reminds of how my alcoholic neighbor used to treat his family. It's almost as if someone let a mean drunk be in charge of the Pentagon.
As if governments throughout history haven't constantly used threats to gain leverage? No need to take a personal shot at the guy in charge when this is SOP throughout the administration.
Why do you personally feel the need to defend this person given his involvement in what the administration is doing?
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#67So the Pentagon is strongarming a company into cooperation? That reminds of how my alcoholic neighbor used to treat his family. It's almost as if someone let a mean drunk be in charge of the Pentagon.
Without reading every word of every embedded tweet, a part missing from the conversation is HOW they are strongarming. It isn't in private. It's a public threat in the court of public opinion to apply societal pressure on the company. They are attempting to reshape Anthropic's decision into a tribal one, and hurt the brand's reputation within the tribe unless it capitulates.
> Without reading every word of every embedded tweet, a part missing from the conversation is HOW they are strongarming.
There are two possibilities:
> The government would likely argue that dropping the contractual restrictions doesn't change the product. Claude is the same model with the same weights and the same capabilities—the government just wants different contractual terms. […] Anthropic would likely argue the opposite: that its usage restrictions are part of what Claude is as a commercial service, and that Claude-without-guardrails is a product it doesn't offer to anyone. On this view, the government is asking for a new product, and the statute doesn't clearly authorize that.
and
> The more extreme possibility would be the government compelling Anthropic to retrain Claude—to strip the safety guardrails baked into the model's training, not merely modify the access terms. Here the characterization question seems easier: a retrained model looks much more like a new product than dropping contractual restrictions does. Admittedly, the government has a textual argument in its favor: the DPA's definitions of "services" include “development … of a critical critical technology item,” and the government could frame retraining Claude as exactly that. Whether courts would accept that framing, especially in light of the major questions doctrine, is another matter.
* https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-defense-produc...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
A more extreme situation: could the DPA be used to nationalize the model so the government has ownership, and then allow access to more amenable AI players?
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#68Big Tech: you can just do things.
Corrupt, evil Government: OK.
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#69Techno futurist: 1. Builds tool extremely capable of mass surveillance and running autonomous warfighting capabilities. 2. Expresses shock — shock — when the Department of War insists on using the tool for mass surveillance and autonomous warfighting systems.
Step 1.5 is also the one being ignored by 95% of comments here: the leverage the Pentagon is using is the lucrative contract Anthropic signed with them. The only threat here is Anthropic sucking up less money from the DoD.
Re: The Pentagon threatens Anthropic
#70Techno futurist: 1. Builds tool extremely capable of mass surveillance and running autonomous warfighting capabilities. 2. Expresses shock — shock — when the Department of War insists on using the tool for mass surveillance and autonomous warfighting systems.
I don't doubt that Claude is capable of mass surveillance, but surely it is not too much of a stretch to say it may not be suitable for automated killbots?