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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

#631

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…

To me this is just another marketing stunt where the company wants to build a public image so their customers trust them (see Apple), but then as always who knows what will happen behind the scenes. Just see when most major US companies had backdoors on their systems providing all data to the NSA, i.e. PRISM.

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

#633
post #319

Earlier 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…

> 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. This sounds quite backwards to me. It's been abundantly clear in today's times that, in fact, you only really know who somebody really is when they're under stress. Most people, it seems, prefer a different facade when th…

Exactly

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

#634
Surely this is a powerful signal to divest from Anthropic if you don't live in the US? There's a lot of here's what we support you do to foreigners but no way can you do it in the US?

I can never tell how much of this is puffery from Anthropic.

I do think they like to overstate their power.

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

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ghandi of the corporate world is yet to be found

Considering he slept naked with his grandniece (he was in his 70s, she was 17), I'd say there are a lot of them in the corporate world. Though probably more in politics.

I think I am paraphrasing some hackernews discussion that I saw about it prior but The problem with gandhi was that he was so focused in idealism and that translates into somehow a utilitarian line of thinking to this thing which is of course a very despicable and vile thing for him to do.

There have been quite a lot discussions about this itself on Gandhi here on Hackernews as well.

Gandhi itself became the face of satyagrah movement considering he started it but that movement only had values because of many important people joining in.

Here is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr that I found about satyagrah from wikipedia

Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by his Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts. The whole concept of Satyagraha (Satya is truth which equals love, and agraha is force; Satyagraha, therefore, means truth force or love force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform. ... It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking.[25]

It's better to wish for more satyagrahis to be named but I don't think that the western media might catch on to it.

Ghaffar Khan, Sarojini Naidu, Vinoba Bhave are all people who I think have a simple life history while being from different religions and castes and genders while adhering to the philosophy of satyagrah.

That being said, Satyagrah might not work in the current contexts because Britain was only able to rule India with the help of Indians which was why satyagrah movement was so successful. But if, the govt can get hands onto autonomous drones capable of killing civilians and mass surveilance then satyagrah might not work as much in the near future

(the two things Anthropic is denying to provide to the DOD, vis-a-vis the article itself)

I don't think Anthropic is a great company, it certainly has its flaws but I do think that it is very admirable of them to stand even when the govt.s is essentially saying to follow them or they will literally kill the business with the 3-4 national security laws that they are proposing to invoke on Anthropic.

I do urge to say satyagrah or mention other peaceful protests because usually whenever people talk about gandhi now, this discussion is bound to come which really alienates from the original thing at times. It was the collective efforts of the blood of so so many Indian leaders for India to gain independence.

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

#636
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This last development is much to the honor of Anthropic and Amodei and confirms what you're saying. What I don't get though is, why did the so-called "Department of War" target Anthropic specifically? What about the others, esp. OpenAI? Have they already agreed to cooperate? or already refused? Why aren't they part of this?

Anthropic can serve its models within the security standards required to handle classified data. The other labs do not yet claim to have this capability. Even if they do, I assume the other labs would prefer to avoid drawing the ire of the administration, the public, or their employees by choosing a side publicly.

But how can they avoid it, why are they not asked?

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

#637

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…

[flagged]

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

#638

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 have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values, I am sure you think they are better than the average startup executive, but such hyperbole puts the objectivity of your whole judgement under question. They pragmatically changed their views of safety just recently, so those values for which they would burn at the stake are…

> They pragmatically changed their views of safety just recently, so those values for which they would burn at the stake are very fluid.

Yes it was a pragmatic change, no it was not a change in their values. The commentary here on HN about Anthropic's RSP change was completely off the mark. They "think these changes are the right thing for reducing AI risk, both from Anthropic and from other companies if they make similar changes", as stated in this detailed discussion by Holden Karnofsky, who takes "significant responsibility for this change":

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HzKuzrKfaDJvQqmjh/responsibl...

> I strongly think today’s environment does not fit the “prisoner’s dilemma” model. In today’s environment, I think there are companies not terribly far behind the frontier that would see any unilateral pause or slowdown as an opportunity rather than a warning.

> What I didn’t expect was that RSPs (at least in Anthropic’s case) would come to be seen as hard unilateral commitments (“escape clauses” notwithstanding) that would be very difficult to iterate on.

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

#639
post #319

Earlier 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…

> it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough Even if you went to burning man and your souls bonded, you only know a person at a particular point in time - people's traits flanderize, they change, they emphasize different values, they develop different incentives or commitments. I've watched very morally certain people fall to mania or deep cynicism over the last 10 years as the pillars of society s…

In these days of the Epstein mails, it's worth remembering one thing that's become clear: Epstein was an extremely nice guy. He seemed kind, sincere, interested in what you were doing, civilized etc.

But to quote Little Red Riding Hood in Stephen Sondheim's musical: Nice is different than good. It's hard to accept if people you really like do horrible things. It's tempting to not believe what you hear, or even what you see. And Epstein was good at getting you to really like him, if he wanted to.

That doesn't mean we should be suspicious of niceness. It just means that we should realize, again, nice is different than good.

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

#640
post #155

This is the strongest statement in the post: > They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels u…

First of all, there's no such thing as "Department of War". A department name change is legal/binding only after it's approved by the Senate. Senator Kelly is still calling it DoD (Department of Defense). > Mass domestic surveillance. Since when has DoD started getting involved with the internal affairs of the country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

Well, Trump renamed it, and since Congress is now a subsidiary of the Executive Branch, it's the Department of War.
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