Hegseth doesn't need autonomous drones, he's got the Treasury.
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#712I 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…
> But I do think that most people who are making the important decisions at Anthropic are well-intentioned, driven by values, and are genuinely motivated by trying to make the transition to powerful AI to go well.
in which case, these people will necessarily have to be the first to go, I suppose, once the board decides enough is enough.
Refusing to do things that go against "company values" even if they risk damaging the company, isn't exceptional circumstances; it's the very definition of "company values".
But if those values aren't "company" values but "personal" values, then you can be sure there's always going to be someone higher up who isn't going to be very appreciative once "personal" values start risking "company" damage.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#713I 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…
> Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are After 20 years of everyone in this industry saying "we want to make the world a better place" and doing the opposite, the problem here is not really related to people's "understanding". And before the default answer kicks in: this is not cynicism. Plenty of folks here on HN and elsewhere legitimately believe that it…
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Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#714>> We chose to forgo several hundred million dollars in revenue to cut off the use of Claude by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party
You can’t choose to work with OFAC-designated entities.. there are very serious criminal penalties. Therefore, this statement is somewhat misleading in my opinion.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#715this is.. a nothing burger? they don't exclude working for autonomous weapons, nor do they exclude mass surveillance. so what gives?
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#716I 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…
"They're driven by values" is meaningless praise unless you qualify what these values are. The Nazis had values too, you know. They were even willing to die for them. One of the core values of the Catholic church is probably compassion. Except for the victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by their clergy. So what core values led "Dario, Jared, and Sam" to work with a government that just tried to rename the DoD to "dep…
> Except for the victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by their clergy.
I honestly wonder how much of this is made up. Given the size of whole organization and it holding onto its weird priciples regarding the personal relationships of its members (introduced in the far past to limit the secular power of its clergy), there certainly will be SOME cases.
But in the one case a frater, who I knew, got convicted, he definitely didn't do it. He was accused by several independent former students and even some of the staff backed the students claims with first hand accounts of him having been alone with some of the students at the time. This supposedly happened on a trip with tight schedules, so all accounts and stated times were quite specific, even in the pre-smartphone era.
The only problem: He wasn't with the group at that time at all. I screwed up embarrassingly (and the staff, too, leaving a young student stranded in the middle of nowhere) and he thought he could slip out, come pick me up and nobody (but maybe me with him) would get in trouble over it. Turned out he forgot refueling, both of us stayed at a pastor's guest house and he called the group telling them, that they should go ahead without us and that we would drive to the event directly on our own. The supposed abuse was claimed to have happened at another short stay of the group where they spent a day visiting some mine before joining with us again.
Almost 3 decades later he got railroaded in court, me learning about it in the news.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#717I 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…
There are well intentioned people everywhere, also at Google or OpenAI...
But the final decisions made usually depend on the incentive structures and mental models of their leaders. Those can be quite different...
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are After 20 years of everyone in this industry saying "we want to make the world a better place" and doing the opposite, the problem here is not really related to people's "understanding". And before the default answer kicks in: this is not cynicism. Plenty of folks here on HN and elsewhere legitimately believe that it…
I don't even think both things are contradictory. People that put too much value in their ideals tend to oversee the consequences of such ideals in real life and do wrong without deviating an inch from their ideals.
But is that really the problem in big tech today? To me it looks like sooner or later they cave from their ideals (or leadership changes) and that the reason every time is that they want to make even more money.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#719I 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…
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 is already cooperating with the DoD, presumably fulfilling all the conditions and the DoD likes their stuff so much it wants to use it more broadly, so they want to change the terms of the agreement(s). Anthropic disagrees on some points; DoD wants to force them to agree.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#720I 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…
> But I do think that most people who are making the important decisions at Anthropic are well-intentioned, driven by values, and are genuinely motivated by trying to make the transition to powerful AI to go well. in which case, these people will necessarily have to be the first to go, I suppose, once the board decides enough is enough. Refusing to do things that go against "company values" even if they risk damaging…
Shareholders do not control Anthropic's board, it is not structured like a typical corporation.