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.
We Will Not Be Divided
701–710 of 912 posts
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#702Domestic 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 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
#703Earlier 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…
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#704Earlier 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.
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#705> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#706Earlier 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.
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#707Earlier 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…
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
#708Earlier 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.
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#709They 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.
Re: We Will Not Be Divided
#710Earlier 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.
The US government has lots of corporatism, but this isn't an example of that.