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We Will Not Be Divided

notdivided.org

701–710 of 912 posts

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#701
post #584

This has much broader implications for the US economy and rule of law in the US. If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon? This marks an important turning point for the US.

The turning point happened when Trump was reelected. One could argue the turning point happened Jan. 6 2020 and nobody truly cared. The consequence should have been for all insurrectionists and Trump himself to be tried for treason and be imprisoned indefinitely. Yet here we are.

It was when the supreme court judged he could act like a king, the summer before he was elected, inventing things the constitution never said and setting the example of lawlessness Trump now follows up on confidently.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#702

Domestic mass surveillance might feel tolerable when you live in the country conducting it. But how would you feel about other countries adopting similar policies, and thereby mass-surveilling the American people? Because that's exactly what these policies authorize when applied to the rest of the world.

The way the anthropic statement was written really stood out to me. How they posture themselves in favour of surveillance for foreign countries or the existence of fully autonomous weapons if they don't threaten US citizen lifes. I wonder if this is how some non minority of American thinks or was just worded like that to try to appeal to the "most radical patriots"

I'm pretty neutral in this fiasco, but if a company is willing to consider *in principle* providing services to the *Department of War*, they'd better be OK with their services being used to conduct surveillance or kill people of other countries...

I think war is bad and generally a stupid thing to do, but my point is that if they were negotiating terms with the department at all, it's really a given they'd be OK with the stuff you took issue with.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#703
post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the passivity of the US population will be remembered for generations. Of course it's the people talking about freedom the most that do the least, as usual, big mouths are antithetical to actions.

The US educational system has been manufacturing these dual career specialists that are competent in their careers and believe that makes them specialists in all other area, but they get played like fools constantly. The level of discourse, of public conversation, is like 7th graders. Until you get to politics, then it's "sports talk" with "winning" being all that matters, even if winning means the destruction of law…

And, I believe, a sufficiently comfortable population isn't motivated to act. With social media and streaming, people aren't bored enough/are too engagingly distracted to bother.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#704
post #594
post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, if you have big actions to show off, then show us how it’s done. You step up and start shooting at the heartless monsters running the first (US armed forces) and second (ICE) most well-funded militaries in the world. Go ahead. We’ll be right there behind you. (Yeah, I’m burning some hn karma for this, I imagine.)

Thank you for giving an example of what I’m talking about. You’re there fantasising about armed conflict when there are a million different actions one can take. But nope, only words, words and more words.

Actions that are words aren't much of an action.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#706
post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would feel much better about other countries mass surveillance than the US. China for instance can’t do nearly as much to me as the US justice system can.

Ok so now connect the mass surveillance system to an automated killing system that can blow you up in the grocery store because you're standing in line next to its target.

Yes but you would be dead before it can affect your quality of life so its unimpactful. The former can very much impact your life

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#707
post #685
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an absurd stance. So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? Again, they could have just chosen another vendor for their two projects of mass spying on American citizens and building LLM-powered autonomous killer robots. But instead, they actively went to torch the town and salt the earth, so nothing else may grow.

> So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? No. It honestly doesn’t take much of a charitable leap to see the argument here: AI is uniquely able (for software) to reject, undermine, or otherwise contradict the goals of the user based on pre-trained notions of morality. We have seen many examples of this; it is not a theoretical risk. Microsoft Excel isn’t going to pop up Clippy and…

You're acting as if this was about the DoD cancelling their contracts with Anthropic over their unwillingness to lift constraints from their product which are unacceptable in a military application—which would be absolutely fair and justified, even if the specific clauses they are hung up on should definitely lift eyebrows. They could just exclude Anthropic from tenders on AI products as unsuitable for the intended use case.

But that is not what has happened here: The DoD is declaring Anthropic as economical Ice-Nine for any agency, contractor, or supplier of an agency. That is an awful lot of possible customers for Anthropic, and right now, nobody knows if it is an economic death sentence.

So I'm really struggling to understand why you're so bent on assuming good faith for a move that cannot be interpreted in a non-malicious way.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#708
post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The turning point happened when Trump was reelected. One could argue the turning point happened Jan. 6 2020 and nobody truly cared. The consequence should have been for all insurrectionists and Trump himself to be tried for treason and be imprisoned indefinitely. Yet here we are.

It was when the supreme court judged he could act like a king, the summer before he was elected, inventing things the constitution never said and setting the example of lawlessness Trump now follows up on confidently.

And continuing to pull on that thread, when the Senate refused to vote on Supreme Court nominees for the president in 2016.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#709
post #28
post #20

They should be collecting signatures from employees at xAI. I think they're probably most likely to fill the space left by Anthropic.

There is a specific kind of person that joins xAI over the other companies and it is definitely not a moral one.

It's hard to deny an offer to become a millionaire in the next 3 years if you just hang tight at xAI, especially if you don't have any offers from competing AI labs. Also, LLMs are converging into an easy-to-replicate commodity. It doesn't matter much who wastes their money on you to build them.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#710
post #603
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a good reason to downvote you, though that's a pattern here these days. But I do have a question about your statement. This move certainly has the hallmarks of fascism. But how is it corporatism when it's the elected government that's trying to punish a corporation? Granted that this regime is deep in the pockets of the corporations and billionaires. But it looks like they would have spared Anthropic if t…

> But it looks like they would have spared Anthropic if they capitulated to the regime's demands and bent their back over. Yeah dude, that's the point.

That's the opposite of corporatism. Corporatism would be if the corporations made demands of the government, and the government bent over backwards.

The US government has lots of corporatism, but this isn't an example of that.

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