Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, has said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled the start-up a “supply chain risk,” a move that would sever ties between the company and the U.S. government.
Anthropic’s unwillingness to accede shows how the Department of Defense cannot easily force Silicon Valley firms to comply. Unlike defense contractors that have worked with the Pentagon for decades and are reliant on longstanding military contracts, the A.I. companies are contending with different internal pressures and external factors.
the article mentions that:
When pressed for specifics on the nature of the safeguards, OpenAI’s Altman replied, “We’ve included the phrase ‘pretty please don’t use this for killing people or spying on Americans’ in our contract with Department of Defense. With this language in place we’re confident that our company values respecting human life and the privacy of all Americans is protected”. /s
The real problem for Anthropic is the clearly vindictive “supply chain threat” designation they were immediately slapped with, which prohibits the Defense Department from buying services from anyone who uses Anthropic’s services themselves.
This can be contested in court, at least, and is almost sure to be ruled on in Anthropic’s favor since it’s so blatantly unjustified. But that might not matter. It’ll take a while (costing contracts and momentum) and once the ruling is made I wouldn’t bet on the Trump administration obeying it anyway.
I’d argue these quotes are on topic but don’t come close to addressing the logical inconsistencies.
That could depend on your take of this statement. I personally don’t understand how this could be done with high certainty and most AI researchers I respect seem to have a similar analysis
i’d say the article shares your skepticism
Oh…
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam
that is indeed in this very article. please read the last paragraphs
That is a very misleading title for the article. It’s basically a short timeline of the DoD doing its table flip.
Half the article seems to be trying to make the point that these AI providers aren’t jumping to support the DoD with logic that basically amounts to “Even though Google ran to rename to the Gulf of America, there are some rank and file engineers that say they don’t like this” with a couple of companies treated that way. The article’s thesis, for me at least, is a massive shrug until more pushback is seen from these companies.
No shit. That’s been true of most of their companies complicity. I was pretty vocal about early actions it was just less headline grabbing and my voice wasn’t going to do shit to change the company’s actions. The argument that this situation is any different is pretty precariously made in the article.
The content, for me, is also still pretty lacking on n
Humorously, Anthropocene wanted the gig. So, it might have been openAI who got the rally. They’re both the same people.