Department of War.
What a shit name
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
841–850 of 1001 posts
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#842I 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, and b) they think is a net negative in the long term. (Many others, too, they're just well-known.)
This is a nice strawman, but it means nothing in the long run. People's values change and they often change fast when their riches are at stake. I have zero trust in anyone mentioned here because their "values" are currently at odds with our planet (in numerous facets). If their mission was to build sustainable and ethical AI I'd likely have a different perspective. However, Anthropic, just like all their other Frontier friends, are accelerating the burn of our planet exponentially faster and there's no value proposition AI doesn't currently solve for outside of some time savings, in general. Again, it's useful, but it's also not revolutionary. And it's being propped up incongruently with its value to society and its shareholders. Not that I really care about the latter...
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#843I don't trust the statement of Anthropic too much. In the past they have done things like - https://the-decoder.com/anthropics-head-of-safeguards-resear... - https://the-decoder.com/anthropics-ceo-admits-compromising-w... (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44651971 , https://futurism.com/leaked-messages-ceo-anthropic-dictators ) - https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-backs-pre...
[deleted]
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#844Something feels off about this announcement. Anyone else? Credit where it's due, going on record like this isn't easy, particularly when facing pressure from a major government client. Still, the two limits Anthropic is defending deserve a closer look. On surveillance: the carve-out only protects people inside the US. Speaking as someone based in Europe, that's a detail that doesn't go unnoticed. On autonomous weapon…
>the carve-out only protects people inside the US. Speaking as someone based in Europe, that's a detail that doesn't go unnoticed.
I'm not sure an American company prioritising the privacy of American people is worth questioning. As a European, Anthropic are very low on the list of companies I worry about in terms of the progressive eradication of my privacy.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#845Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Resist. Continue calling it the DoD.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#846I 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…
Don't attribute to ideals what is simple self-preservation.
No sane person wants to become a legitimate military target. They want to sleep in their own beds, at home, without risking their families lives. Just like the rest of us.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#847Does US really have Department of War? Is this Antropics way to show how f &^ ^& up they are in Department of Defense, or did they rebranded it to the old WWI/II days?
[flagged]
To be fair, it's probably the most sensible thing this administration has done - the new/old name is simply more accurate.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#848Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also downstream of voters who voted in a president who promised to be dictatorial after failing at an attempted insurrection. We need to deprogram like 70M very confused people.
[flagged]
There was no landslide. Trump got 49.9% of the vote. And it was after his attempted insurrection to overturn a valid election in which he was soundly rejected. He's never received 50% of the vote despite his relentless lies about voter fraud.
I'm not upset at people for having a differing opinion or being upset at some economic conditions attributable to Democrats, but rather their persistent belief in provably false information like the relative danger of immigrants, the causes of climate change, vaccine safety, election security or whether or not a particular ethnic group is eating their pets. This isn't a matter of opinion or it's a matter of observable reality and fundamental human morality.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#849I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…
What else would you expect? The military is obviously going to develop the most powerful systems they can. Do you want a tech company to say “the military can never use our stuff for autonomous systems forever, the end”? What if Anthropic ends up developing the safest, most cost effective systems for that purpose?
Yes, that's exactly what I want them to say.
Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
#850Agree fully with the main points of this statement. Mass domestic surveillance is the hallmark of an authoritarian and undemocratic state. That such a state holds 'votes' regularly does not detract from the chilling effect on public discourse and politics caused by mass surveillance. The guardrail on fully automated weapons makes perfect sense, and hopefully becomes standardised globally.
if the people broadly support and vote for mass democratic surveillance, is it still authoritarian and undemocratic?
Democratic maybe, authoritarian definitely