Some of us knew about the un-lubed dildo of consequences. And warned our fellow countrymen. But they appear to have joined a cult and were immune to reason. Now we are all riding the said dildo, whether we asked for it or not.
> OAI conditions were basically "DoW won't do anything which violates the rules DoW sets for itself."
I believe this understanding is correct. The issue many people have these days with Dept. of War, and most of Trump admin is that they have little respect for laws. They only follow the ones they like and openly ignore the ones that are inconvenient.
Dept of "War" should have zero problems agreeing to the two conditions Anthropic outlined, if they were honest brokers. But I think most of us know that they are not. Calling them dishonest brokers seems very charitable.
I don’t care who is in the whitehouse. Snowden revealed the crimes of the NSA in 2013 when Obama was president. They’re all going to want to use AI for mass surveillance
AI doesn't add anything to the ability to do mass surveillance. That genie was already out of the bottle from clouds and big data systems. At best AI might take on some of the gruntwork for drawing conclusions from profiles but it's doing it's usual thing of being a powerful interface built on top of other systems.
> AI doesn't add anything to the ability to do mass surveillance
I recommend reading Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus for a deep discussion around this.
He makes the point that what makes this AI age much more dangerous for mass surveillance isn't just the collection of data, which has indeed been possible for a while, but the new ability to have AI sift through that enormous volume of information, an ability which until recently has not been possible in a meaningful way without a ton of manual work to support it.
Older attempts at mass control of a population already involved mass surveillance, even in a large amount of detail, but even when capturing in detail all citizens' activities, there were just not enough people around to be able to dig through that and analyze it. This has been somewhat true even with the help of computers, though computers have certainly already been making this easier.
But now you can just give all that data to an AI with your instructions, and it'll apply some sort of "judgement" on your behalf, completely autonomously, and even perform actions against those folks it finds, again autonomously, without needing to manually build a whole infrastructure to do that with manual rules. That's a very meaningful upgrade for someone wanting to control a population.
like saying kids having internet-connected devices with built-in cameras doesn't increase the probability of sexting, they could do the same with film cameras and a fax machine
I don't think that's what is being said, mainly? Like that's why Anthropic wants to have it in the contract(s) with the government?
At the same time, it is expressly illegal in some circumstances; that was the whole core of the Snowden revelations. The NSA and CIA are expressly curtailed from doing that by law — there are cases where they may surveil citizens with a court order, but not "mass" surveillance. There are some restrictions on the military along those same lines.
Keywords: Executive Order 12333, FISA, National Security Act, Posse Comitatus Act
Ex: For the above statement, if they're truly dishonest brokers and openly ignore the rules that are inconvenient, they would have zero problems agreeing to Anthropic's terms and then violating them. So what you say may be quite true, but there would still need to be more to the story for it to make sense.
Ex: DoW officials are stating that they were shocked that their vendor checked in on whether signed contractual safety terms were violated: They require a vendor who won't do such a check. But that opens up other confusing oversight questions, eg, instead of a backchannel check, would they have preferred straight to the IG? Or the IG more aggressively checking these things unasked so vendors don't? It's hard to imagine such an important and publicly visible negotiation being driven by internal regulatory politicking.
I wonder if there's a straighter line for all these things. Irrespective of whether folks like or dislike the administration, they love hardball negotiations and to make money. So as with most things in business and government, follow the money...
I have no idea what exactly Anthropic was offering the DoD, but if there were a LLM product, possible that the existing guardrails prevented the model from executing on the DoD vision.
"Find all of the terrorists in this photo", "Which targets should I bomb first?"
Even if the DoD wanted to ignore the legal terms, the model itself would not cooperate. DoD required a specially trained product without limitations.
If your company makes an herbicide that happens to be very good at killing off anyone who drinks it at a high concentration in their water supply, you're saying that there should be no way for your company to resist being used for mass murder (including unavoidable collateral damage)?
Also, the core mission of the military is not "killing its adversaries through any means necessary". It is to defend state interests. Some people have a belief that mass killing is the best mechanism for accomplishing that. I do not agree with, nor do I want to associate with, those people. They are morally and objectively wrong. Yes, sometimes killing people is the most effective -- or more likely, the quickest -- way. In practice, it doesn't work very well. The threat of violence is much more powerful than actually committing violence. If you have to resort to the latter, you've usually screwed up and lost the chance to achieve the optimal outcome. It is true that having no restrictions whatsoever on your ability to commit violence is going to be more intimidating, but it also means that you have to maintain that threat constantly for everyone, because nobody has any other reason to give you what you want.
The actual military is not evil. Your conception of it is.
>> Unpopular opinion around here, but no company should have the ability to stop the military from its core mission: killing its adevarsaries through any means necessary.
> The actual military is not evil. Your conception of it is.
You're right, but there's a a real question here: should a company have the ability to control or veto the decisions of the democratically-elected government?
To give different hypothetical example: should Microsoft be allowed to put terms in its Windows contracts with the government, stipulating that Windows cannot be used to create or enforce certain tax policy or regulations that Microsoft disagrees with? Windows is all over, and I'm sure pretty much every government process touches Windows at some point, so such a term would have a lot of power.
> You're right, but there's a a real question here: should a company have the ability to control or veto the decisions of the democratically-elected government?
I don't think "control or veto" is fair. Anthropic is not trying to prevent the US government from creating full autonomous killbots based on inadequate technology. They are only using contract law to prevent their own stuff from being used in that way.
But that aside, my opinion is that to a first order approximation, yes a company should very much be able to have say in its contract negotiations with any party including the government. It's very similar to the draft. I don't believe a draft is ethical until the situation is extreme, and there ought to be tight controls on what it takes to declare the situation to be that extreme. At any other time, nobody should be forced to join the military and shoot people, and corporations (that are made of people) should not be forced to have their product used for shooting people.
A corporation is a legal fiction to describe a group of people. Some restrictions can be placed on corporations in exchange for the benefits that come from that legal fiction, but nothing that overrides the rights of its constituent people.
Governments are made of people too. Again, a subset of people are given some powers in order to better achieve the will of the people, but with tight controls on those powers to keep the divergence to a minimum. (Of course, people will always find the cracks and loopholes and break out of their constraints, but I'm talking about design not real-world implementation here.)
So to look at your hypothetical, first I'd say it's not very different from the question of whether an individual person should be forced to personally enforce tax policy. Normally, I'd say no. There are many situations where the government needs more say and authority in such things, but that must only be achieved via representatives of the people passing laws to allow such authority. Other than that, yes: I believe a company should be able to negotiate whatever contract terms it wants. In a democracy, we are not subjects of a controlling government; the government is an extension of us.
In practical terms, if Microsoft were to insist on that contract stipulation, the government would not agree to the contract and would award its business to someone else. If the government were especially out of control and/or unethical, it might punish Microsoft with regulations or declarations of supply chain risk or whatever, but that is clearly overstepping its bounds and ought to be considered illegal if it isn't already. The usual fallback would be that the people would throw the people perpetrating that out on their asses. That's the "democratically-elected part".
Obviously, Microsoft would be stupid to insist on such a thing in their contract, and its employees would probably lose all confidence in the corporate leadership. Most likely, they'd leave and start Muckrosaft next door that rapidly develops a similar product and sells it to the government under a reasonable contract.
Basically, I'm always going to start from people first, and use organizations and laws only in order to achieve the will of the people. The fact that the people are stupid does make that harder, but the whole point of democracy is that we'll work out the right balance over time.
My conception is that the world would be a much simpler place if war was total. No one would start it unless it would be 200% it could win it. And we would all go through military training just in case, you know, a neighbor drank too much last night and thinks it can win against you.
> The threat of violence is much more powerful than actually committing violence.
While I agree with this statement, the only way the threat works is if from time to time you apply violence to reinforce your capability and availability to actually do it. And the US is really good at actually being violent so others don't even think about doing something against it, at least the majority of countries anyway.
I do not see Iran winning this. The current government is also hated by the people who would very much like to see all of them dead.
Al Jazeera has some very good insights into this, and the gist of it is: the Iranian regime is in a fight for its life with nothing to lose. If they are degraded enough, a revolution will start in Iran and they will be killed by the people. Or by US/IL bombs - whichever comes first. There is no way they get out of this alive. They are trying to prolong the inevitable.
No. Iran has almost all of its population part of the same ethnic group, which in Libya it was not true: all the tribes started fighting each other.
It does not an established opposition because the current regime has the habit of killing anyone it doesn't like or goes against the official line. Now there is a chance for opposition to form.
Iran has significant Kurdish, Azeri, Baluchi and Arab minorities, Persians form cca 2/3 of the population.
With the US & Israel supporting the minorities (most likely offering them independence), in the hope of toppling the regime, and bombing mostly Persians, the most likely outcome (assuming they are actually able to force regime change, which is far from guaranteed) is fragmentation and general lawlessness.
Note that whoever inherits the regime would have to deal with wholesale destruction of the country, traumatized population and hate for those who bombed them and killed their relatives and children. Slavishly obeying the new foreign overlords will not be very popular. Have we not learned anything from Iraq and Afghanistan? How can you still believe the fairy tales of welcoming the liberators?
The wars are already total for the weaker sides. See Ukraine/Iran.
Did not stop the stronger side attacking.
You are advocating for no constraints (total war) on the stronger side. Taken literally, that means genocide of the losers. Really, that's what you want?
But yes, you are right, the world would be much simpler in such case - there will be no humans left. OK, maybe some hunter-gatherers.
> You are advocating for no constraints (total war) on the stronger side. Taken literally, that means genocide of the losers. Really, that's what you want?
Taken literally, it means genocide of the losers is an option the winning side has. It always has been.
Note that Genghis Khan's explicit plan when he conquered China was to wipe out the Chinese to make room for Mongols. He wasn't stopped from doing that; there was no constraint to block him.
This is the same mistake as made in Iraq and Syria by media policy pundits. Dictatorial regimes collapse pretty quickly without a significant base of support enough to stop a revolution happening. They might not have a majority of people supporting but it isn't a democracy. Dictatorial regimes will always have one or more of military, business, or sub-groups of citizens in their pockets as clients.
Whenever we say "the regime is hated by it's people it will collapse" it should be asked "then why didn't it collapse already?". In Iran metropolitan areas are where you see opposition. That's also where people have cameras and media orgs tend to be. We get a warped depiction of opposition in Iran even without our own media's baggage. Meanwhile the power base of Iran is everywhere but metropolitan cities. And there's a lot of clients who benefit from the regime. I think this might be worse than the sectarian violence that came out of the Hussein regimes collapse because the Sunni sect his base was built around was still a minority. This time it's the majority and the people being fought against are the Americans, the Israelis and the Arabs so their backs are against the wall this is a total war already from their side.
With the way you've phrased it the government could nuke the entire world; all of the adversaries would be dead along with literally everyone else. I don't really see why it's an issue if a company doesn't want to sell them the tools to do that.
If I start a small business that sells Apples and the US government comes to me and says "we want to buy your apples and fire them at high speed to" these are now your words "kill adversaries through any means necessary."
If I say, no, then am I stopping the military?
I feel like it is reasonable that I can say "no, I don't want to sell you my apples."
I cannot for the life of me figure out why that means I am stopping the military from killing people. The US Military will definitely still be able to kill people for centuries. I'm just saying I don't want to participate in it.
More to the point, if everyone stopped selling anything to the military they would still be able to kill people with their bare hands. People are arguably very good at killing people and it takes civilization to train us not to kill each other.
In the context of the larger discussion, if you already sold apples to the military, you cannot go to them and say you don't like how they're using the apples you sold them.
In the context of the larger discussion, Anthropic thought of that ahead of time and put the restrictions into the contract that the government agreed to. So "already sold" is a non-sequitur; that's not the situation under discussion.
Unfortunately, reality is not determined by what you personally don't believe for a second.
Evidence (the Commander in Chief calling the opposition terrorists, and celebrating their government executions, for example) indicates that reality indeed reflects the things you personally don't believe.
Trump sees many Americans as adversaries (i.e. the 'radical left' like Alex Pretti an ER nurse and Renee Nicole Good - a mother). In his first term he asked whether protestors can be shot in the legs.
So in short it doesn't matter what the Pentagon thinks as Trump is the commander in chief and as far as I know the Pentagon has to follow his orders.
Wasn't that for defense during an actual war started by another country?
Legit war time measures can be a thing (that's why it's fucked if president can just start a war and then use that as excuse for any war time measures they like)
"Legit war time measures" is not a thing. If Congress declares war on Cuba or Venezuale for example, people who do not support it will not see the measures as "legit". The US has a lot of precedent of bombing/invading other countries at the whim of presidents without actually calling it a war for decades.
And for better or worse, it is actually good that it is like this. Otherwise, if Congress declares war on Iran or China or whatever, the whole country will be put on a war footing, companies will be directed to build whatever the Pentagon says it needs, drafts will be enforced and so on. And it would be pretty ugly.
If Congress declared an actual war and if they declared to use war time laws to force a private company to comply with the war effort, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
What happened was different: a private company decided to enforce some terms, as they can do during peace time and they have been bullied in a way that is disgraceful precisely because it didn't happen during war time nor it has been done using the existing laws around that.
What is the purpose of having laws in the first place if we accept that the government can rule by intimidation?
Yes, Musk is guilty of treason for exactly that reason. He directly sabotaged a major US military operation in Ukraine.
However, the military is bound by US and international law. It's clear they're not going to obey either of those with respect to this contract.
On top of that, Anthropic has correctly pointed out that the use cases Trump was pushing for are well beyond the current capabilities of any of Anthropic models. Misusing their stuff in the way Trump has been (in violation of the contract) is a war crime, because it has already made major mistakes, targeted civilians, etc.
Let's just clarify that visitors don't have the same rights as citizens. Whether or not you agree with the current administration's policies hopefully we can agree that it is entirely reasonable for them to deport foreign political dissidents more or less at their discretion.
If you want to put this to the test try crossing the Canadian border and when they ask you the purpose of your visit respond that it's to attend a protest.
> Let's just clarify that visitors don't have the same rights as citizens.
Yunseo Chung was not a visitor. She came to the United States from South Korea at age 7. She was arrested last year for peacefully protesting. Charges against her were dropped but the govt. canceled her green card.
The govt. has been trying to deport her since then, but the courts keep blocking it.
While the legality of these actions are being debated in courts, I think most of us can agree that this is reprehensible behavior on part of the Trump admin.
I never claimed to condone the actions of the current admin. The examples of people being deported for protesting that I am familiar with are student visa holders. While I don't personally support the examples that I am aware of, I also recognize that in those specific cases the executive branch appears to be within the bounds of the law. I don't even object to the executive branch having the power to cancel the visas of political dissidents in the general case, merely to how they are choosing to apply it.
It's surprising to me to learn that a green card could be revoked for protected speech. That ought to fall well outside the bounds of the law IMO. Green cards and visas are entirely different things.
>While I don't personally support the examples that I am aware of, I also recognize that in those specific cases the executive branch appears to be within the bounds of the law. I don't even object to the executive branch having the power to cancel the visas of political dissidents
It's my understanding that the 1st amendment applies to everyone, not just citizens. So if that's true (not 100% sure about that), how can political speech (protesting) be a valid reason to remove someone from the US?
> Trump admin did put people in prison and then deported them, for doing nothing more than protesting.
Link? I’m guessing we’re going to see that this definition of “protesting” involves being aggressive and directly in the face of law enforcement officers, not merely holding a sign at a distance.
> Link? I’m guessing we’re going to see that this definition of “protesting” involves being aggressive and directly in the face of law enforcement officers, not merely holding a sign at a distance.
Please read up on this one example of a US permanent resident. And then justify the actions of the govt against Yunseo Chung.
FCC ensures a product doesn't cause radio interference, while UL ensures the product is safe to use and won't cause fires or electric shocks. For DIY, your primary concern is UL certification.
The idea is that criticism of Iran from an Iranian-American would have more merit. However, we have no way to confirm the validity of this claim. It could very well be someone pretending to be an Iranian-American.
> But, if somebody offered me a time machine to travel back in time and live at any point in history, would I take it? Hell no.
If given a choice I would rather be born in 1940s. 80 years of relative peace, prosperity, cheap education, cheap housing, only single parent needs to work, stronger community network, less overpopulation, better access to doctors, better wealth equality, and you get to partake in the first generation of computers before computers became a method of spying and manipulation of purchasing decisions. Honestly I would much rather be hacking on v6 unix than what I am currently doing.
Would you want to be born a girl in the 1940s? How about as a non white person? And that is assuming you were even born in the US.
Before women had the ability to be professionals earning real money, or access to birth control and many, many other types of healthcare specific to women. Before no fault divorce and before rape within marriage was outlawed?
Decades before the Civil Rights Act and Jim Crow laws still existed?
> better access to doctors
I would take a nurse today over a doctor from the 1940s. The amount of advancement in healthcare between 1940 to today, even just over the counter stuff or information wise from online searches is tremendous.
My grandma was born in the 40s and said it was better back then.
> Decades before the Civil Rights Act and Jim Crow laws still existed?
I don’t live in the USA so that is irrelevant.
Also, keep in mind I still have over half my life to live and the future seems very uncertain. Maybe I am a pessimist, but I would take 1940-2020 which I now know in hindsight was a pretty decent time to live compared to whatever the next 40 years holds. Maybe I am wrong and we will magically cure cancer, solve wealth inequality, 20 hour work weeks due to automation, and stay WW3.
> My grandma was born in the 40s and said it was better back then.
My grandma was also, and she will tell you women should not have as many rights as men. And that periods make women unclean. And kids should have to follow their parents’ religion. And corporal punishment for kids is okay. And daughter in laws should defer to parents’ in laws.
> Maybe I am wrong and we will magically cure cancer
Quality of life after a cancer diagnosis is leaps and bounds better today than it was in decades past. Setting the standard at what I presume is “take this pill and you never have to worry about cancer again” seems like a good way to disappoint yourself.
> Also, keep in mind I still have over half my life to live and the future seems very uncertain.
Things might very well be trending down, but they can still be better than the past in some ways, and worse in some ways.
> Things might very well be trending down, but they can still be better than the past in some ways, and worse in some ways.
Maybe, I would take a guaranteed pretty good 80 years over the next 40-50 years where things are trending downwards. And for all we know, the past 80 years were a fluke caused by WW2 and the carbon impulse happening at the same time.
But when meeting friends, you’d have to agree in advance to a spot and time and wait aimlessly, so many times in the day. Then you’d pick up smoking or reading depending on your character.
> Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard. Turns out it's doesn't feel anything like that and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing.
You got lucky and had kid(s) that were not extremely difficult to raise. Not everybody gets that. Not all kids are alike. Some will make your life a living hell. It is a total crapshoot.
Also, not everybody enjoys parenting, even if they have easy kids. We are not all built the same.
I did get lucky and had relatively easy kids. I love them. But, I do not enjoy parenting.
How about they are pointing out a worrisome direction society might be taking, whereas work will infiltrate even more what used to be family or personal time, thus accelerating burnout?
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