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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#91

Post by davidw »

6thbit wrote: post #26
hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

> they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, This is what baffles me when I see people flocking to them for subscriptions based on these events.

If LLM's are indeed a game changer professionally, you kind of need to pick one.

Personally, I loathe seeing power shift towards mega corporations like that, away from being able to run your own computer with free software, but it feels like the economics are headed that way in terms of productivity.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#92

Post by skeledrew »

rmm78 wrote: post #60
cyberax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember, we're not at war with Iran. The House Speaker said so.

we are though, they plotted to assassinate the US president, not to mention being the #1 sponsor of terrorism in the middle east, attacking our allies

US took out Iran's supreme leader. It's simple tit for tat.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#93

Post by fwip »

camillomiller wrote: post #36
mempko wrote: post #21

Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people. This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of bloo…

Were you earning seven figures tho? That suppresses moral stances rather quickly I reckon

Perhaps. It should do the opposite though - you've likely got enough in the bank that you don't need to work a day in your life again.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#94

Post by unethical_ban »

randerson wrote: post #88
jmward01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk. Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fi…

Isn't this the moral hazard of war as it becomes more of a distance sport? That powerful governments can order the razing of cities and assassinate leaders with ease?

We need to do it because our enemies are doing it, in any case.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#95

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

ArchieScrivener wrote: post #49
rockskon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military isn't quite as aggressively catering to the people who historically have bullied techies as they used to. Aside from that - there's a lot more people in tech now. It grew too fast too quick to maintain all the values it had back in the 00's and earlier.

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#96

Post by Esophagus4 »

jeffbee wrote: post #59
hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

I'm a decade older so maybe I missed the memo but I think you'll have a hard time naming tech companies that actually refused to work with the military, which were large enough and important enough to be in danger of selling something to the military (i.e. not Be Inc. or Beenz.com) Clearly, all of the traditional big leagues were lined up to take the Army's money. IBM, Control Data, Cray, SGI, and HP all viewed weapo…

Yes, and IBM had a particularly tainted history from WWII.

For every company that stands on values, there is another that will do some shady shit for a dollar.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#97

Post by senadir »

rmm78 wrote: post #55
CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #34

Nothing brings home the Orwellian nature of USA 2026 more for me than the word "warfighter".

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What stops the DoW from going after me? As a Middle Easterner? And once it's done with me, why wouldn't it go after you? as its branches did, locally?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#98

Post by kmeisthax »

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

The Overton window has not shifted, at least not among rank-and-file tech workers. There was very loud and vocal internal opposition to building and selling weapons[0]. They all lost the argument in the boardrooms because the US government writes very big checks. But I am told they are very much still around.

CEOs are bound to sociopathically amoral behavior - not by the law, but by the Pareto-optimal behavior of the job market for executives. The law obligates you to act in the interests of the shareholders, but it does not mandate[1] that Line Go Up. That is a function of a specific brand of shareholder that fires their CEOs every 18 months until the line goes up.

In 2007, Big Tech had plenty of the consumer market to conquer, so they could afford to pretend to be opposed to selling to the military. But the game they were playing was always going to end with them selling to the military. Once they were entrenched they could ignore the no-longer-useful-to-us-right-now dissenters, change their politics on a dime, and go after the "real money".

[0] Several of the sibling comments are mentioning hypothetical scenarios involving dual-use technologies or obfuscated purposes. Those are also relevant, but not the whole story.

[1] There are plenty of arguments a CEO could use to defend against a shareholder lawsuit that they did not take a particularly short-sighted action. Notably, that most line-go-up actions tend to be bad long-term decisions. You're allowed to sell low-risk investments.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#99

Post by relaxing »

jeffbee wrote: post #59
hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

I'm a decade older so maybe I missed the memo but I think you'll have a hard time naming tech companies that actually refused to work with the military, which were large enough and important enough to be in danger of selling something to the military (i.e. not Be Inc. or Beenz.com) Clearly, all of the traditional big leagues were lined up to take the Army's money. IBM, Control Data, Cray, SGI, and HP all viewed weapo…

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