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Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

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Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#81

Post by int_19h »

msgodel wrote: post #68
int_19h wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs don't make for a particularly good database, though. The "compression" isn't very efficient when you consider that e.g. the entirety of Wikipedia - with images! - is an order of magnitude smaller than a SOTA LLM. There are no known reliable mechanisms to deal with hallucinations, either. So, no, LLMs aren't going to replace databases. They are going to replace query systems over those databases. Think more along…

Maybe query UIs but RAGs like Deep Research depend on old fashion query systems.

You're right, "subsume" would be a better word here. Although vector search is also a thing that I feel should be in the AI bucket. Especially given that SOTA embedding models are increasingly based on general-purpose LLMs.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#82

Post by fuck_AI »

leakycap wrote: post #39
int_19h wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic specifically are the people who talk about "model alignment" and "harmful outputs" the most, and whose models are by far the most heavily censored. This is all done on the basis that AI has a great potential to do harm. One would think that this kind of outlook should logically lead to keeping this tech away from applications in which it would be literally making life or death decisions (see also: Israel's…

I hear where you are coming from, but if an AI company is going to be in this field, wouldn't you want it to be the company with as many protections in place as possible to avoid misuse? We aren't going to stop this march forward, no matter how much it is unpopular it will happen. So, which AI company would you prefer be involved with DOD?

"Avoid misuse"? This is the United States Military we're talking about here. They're directly involved in the ongoing genocide in Gaza at this very moment. There is no way to be ethically involved. Their entire existence is "misuse".

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#83

Post by leakycap »

fuck_AI wrote: post #82
leakycap wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear where you are coming from, but if an AI company is going to be in this field, wouldn't you want it to be the company with as many protections in place as possible to avoid misuse? We aren't going to stop this march forward, no matter how much it is unpopular it will happen. So, which AI company would you prefer be involved with DOD?

"Avoid misuse"? This is the United States Military we're talking about here. They're directly involved in the ongoing genocide in Gaza at this very moment. There is no way to be ethically involved. Their entire existence is "misuse".

I see from your username that your opinion on this matter was likely extremely set-in-stone before reading my comment, or the article (if you did).

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#84

Post by ezst »

spandrew wrote: post #50
lucaspauker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is way better now though...

People pointing out NLP are missing the point — pulling and crafting rules to run effective NLP is time consuming and technical. With an LLM you can just ask it exactly what you want and it interprets. That's the value; and as this deal just proved it's worth the scaling costs.

The point that is missed isn't about LLMs adequacy as a NLP technique, it's that they cost you 10000 times more for the same effect (after the upfront set-up), which is why I have my doubts that they will be used at scale, at the center of some large data ingestion pipeline. The benefit will probably be for the out of ordinary tasks and outliers.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#85

Post by treetalker »

FredPret wrote: post #80
treetalker wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more than a grain of truth here. I think we're in a Gall's Law situation. The system has evolved to extreme complexity and no longer works as intended because people learned to game the system, which keeps the best people for the job out of the system; emasculates the essential checks and balances; and creates a vicious cycle that adds further complexity and races to the bottom. The (likely) only way to fix t…

There's no simple system that will work on the scale of half a continent and 300M people, and a simple way to prove this is to look at large corporations. There's many of them, they compete with one another tooth and nail, (so there's real pressure to simplify and streamline) and they all suffer from complex internal systems. And they are all dwarfed by the US government.

I agree that there is no (one) simple system that would work. Many simple systems are required, but should be as few in number as possible to limit complexity.

And it may be (almost certainly is) that a certain level of (high) complexity is required for such a system to work. I believe that some complex system, evolved from simple systems that work, could itself work. That belief coexists with my belief that the current complex system, having evolved, no longer works; and that it can't be made to work without re-evolving something from simpler systems that work.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#86

Post by jMyles »

kadushka wrote: post #35
jMyles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really not know? It's a difficult question to answer in an HN thread, because on one hand, it requires a review of the history of empire and war profiteering. But on the other hand, it's just obvious to the point of being difficult to even articulate.

If you live in US, taxes you pay directly fund DoD. So if you sponsor their activities, why can't Anthropic do business with them? Which other company would you rather get their (your) money?

Yes of course on some level, people who pay taxes to violent imperial actors are doing a disservice to humanity, and are in some sort of moral quandary.

We all wish that everyone who has ever lived in such a situation has had the bravery to resist. Right?

But I don't think that makes forbearance of such resistance equivalent to taking money from that same actor in exchange for expanding its capability. Those are related but distinct types of transaction.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#87

Post by jMyles »

ghc wrote: post #37
jMyles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really not know? It's a difficult question to answer in an HN thread, because on one hand, it requires a review of the history of empire and war profiteering. But on the other hand, it's just obvious to the point of being difficult to even articulate.

Is it unethical for a drywall installer to accept a contract for a building on a military base?

It's not unreasonable to take such a position, yes.

Look, if you believe that:

a) humanity is headed toward sustained peace

b) a transition from the current world order to a peaceful one is better done in an orderly and adult fashion

...then yes, at some point we all need to back away from participation in the legacy systems, right down to the drywall.

My observation, especially of the younger generations, is that belief in such a future is more common than it has ever been, and it's certainly one I hold.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#88

Post by FredPret »

treetalker wrote: post #85
FredPret wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no simple system that will work on the scale of half a continent and 300M people, and a simple way to prove this is to look at large corporations. There's many of them, they compete with one another tooth and nail, (so there's real pressure to simplify and streamline) and they all suffer from complex internal systems. And they are all dwarfed by the US government.

I agree that there is no (one) simple system that would work. Many simple systems are required, but should be as few in number as possible to limit complexity. And it may be (almost certainly is) that a certain level of (high) complexity is required for such a system to work. I believe that some complex system, evolved from simple systems that work, could itself work. That belief coexists with my belief that the curr…

I agree with this line of thinking, but I also think it's impossible to have a complex system that is universally acknowledged to "work".

In Minsky's Society of Mind, he describes a mind made up of layers of agents. The agents have similar cognitive capacity.

Lower-level agents are close to the detail but can't fit overall picture into their context.

Higher-level ones that can see the overall picture but all the detail has been abstracted from their view.

In such a system, agents on the lower levels will ~always see decisions come down from on high that looks wrong to them given the details that they have access to, even if those decisions are the best the high-level agents can do.

He was describing a hypothetical design for a single artificial mind, but this situation seems strikingly similar to corporate bureaucracy and national politics to me.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#89

Post by kadushka »

int_19h wrote: post #71
kadushka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think humans would make better life or death decisions? Have we never had innocent civilians killed overseas by US military as a result of human error?

The problem with these things is that they allow humans to pretend that they are not responsible for those decisions, because "computer told me to do so". At the same time, the humans who are training those systems can also pretend to not be responsible because they are just making a thing that provides "suggestions" to humans making the ultimate decision. Again, look at what's happening in Gaza right now for a good…

With self-driving cars some human will be held responsible in case of the accident, I hope. Why would it be different here? It seems like a responsibility problem, not a technology one.

Re: Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense

#90

Post by kadushka »

jMyles wrote: post #86
kadushka wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in US, taxes you pay directly fund DoD. So if you sponsor their activities, why can't Anthropic do business with them? Which other company would you rather get their (your) money?

Yes of course on some level, people who pay taxes to violent imperial actors are doing a disservice to humanity, and are in some sort of moral quandary. We all wish that everyone who has ever lived in such a situation has had the bravery to resist. Right? But I don't think that makes forbearance of such resistance equivalent to taking money from that same actor in exchange for expanding its capability. Those are rela…

This might makes sense if you believe US is an evil empire, DoD is doing bad things, and AI will help DoD do even worse things. But it's not so black and white, is it?
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