Wow, and the only restrictions Anthropic asked for are (1) no mass domestic surveillance and (2) require human-in-the-loop for killing [1]. Those seem exceptionally reasonable, and even rather weak, lol :|
Anthropic had these conditions in their contract from the very beginning, in contracts negotiated under Biden. It is their actual principled stance, not maneuvering.
Trump doesn't want another election to happen. He needs some powerful tools to ensure that happens, ie, massive scale ai surveillance and manipulation. Eg, like Xi uses in China. I bet anyone here he starts a war as his excuse
Don’t become numb. They want normal people to be depoliticized, silent, and withdrawn. We’re so much easier to subjugate and exploit that way: hopeless and spineless. They take more and more each day.
In an interview with Zelinsky Trump asks "why haven't you had an election? " Zelensky
: "because we are at war" you can see the idea percolating then. People think I'm a nutter for suggesting there just won't be another election but that's where my money is. I'm waiting for his version of the Gestapo, ICE seems to be a proving ground
An important detail here is that Ukraine's constitution says they can't have an election while they're at war. The US constitution does not say that, and the USA has had elections during wars several times.
There will be a sham election, like in Russia, but a sizable number of people will be unable to vote. Trump only need to steal the election in a few key districts
People like married women who changed their name, or foreign sounding people, they will be prevented to vote in 2026. ICE will guard polls to physically make people unable to reach the ballots
You're not a nutter. Trump constantly projects what he's going to do and no one takes him seriously because what he says is so beyond the pale. I explicitly remember the exact instance you're talking about because I thought the same thing as you are thinking.
Specifically, he would need the US Congress to draft and pass legislation moving the date of the election. I don't know how eager they are, though, to create an unnecessary constitutional crisis.
Their intention is to turn it against the American people. Hegseth literally wrote a book about eliminating democrats from the US, and this surprises people.
That's the restrictions for now. New restrictions could be added later or the situation of the world could change where those no longer seem reasonable. The military needs that ability to move fast and not be held back.
Even the most cockeyed reading of history will tell you that it is absolutely vital to the survival of humanity and all that is good on this earth that the US military be tied down and held back.
Anthropic specifically called out systems "that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets".
I take that to mean they don't want the military using Claude to decide who to kill. As a hyperbolic yet frankly realistic example, they don't want Claude to make a mistake and direct the military to kill innocent children accidentally identified as narco-terrorists.
At least, that's the most charitable interpretation of everything going on. I suspect they are also worried that the sitting administration wants to use AI to help them execute a full autocratic takeover of the United States, so they're attempting to kill one of the world's most innovative companies to set an example and pressure other AI labs into letting their technology be used for such purposes.
I don't know what you're referencing, but it doesn't matter. I judge people by their actions more than their words. The actions in this case are simple: Anthropic doesn't want their models to be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of American citizens, but everything else is fair game; in response, the sitting administration is attempting to kill the company (since a strict reading of the security risk order would force most of their partners, suppliers, etc., to cut them off completely).
Giving precedence to words over actions is how you get taken advantage, abused, deceived, etc.
> Whatever they were asked to do, they should just be upfront about.
Anthropic is not being asked to do anything, except renegotiate the contracts. The DoW Claude models run on government AWS. Anthropic has minimal access to these systems and does not see the classified data that is being ingested as prompts. It is very unlikely that Dario actually knows what the DoW wants to do with these models. But even if he did, it would be classified information that he is not at liberty to disclose.
However the product they provide likely has safety filters that cause some prompts to not be processed if it is violates the two contractual conditions. That is what the DoW wants removed.
He didn't talk around it. He wrote down specifically what the two issues were, which is precisely why now the entire world knows what's actually going on. If risking your company's existence to prevent a (potential) atrocity is weakness, I don't know what strength is.
Strength is saying what they were asked to do. I want to know!
Did the DoW ask them to make kill drones? Because if so THAT IS A REALLY BIG DEAL.
The vagueness is irritating. He’s saying they won’t do something, the DoW is saying they don’t even want them to do that, which should resolve the issue, but hasn’t. There is obviously something else at play here.
You're confused because you're taking everything the people involved are saying literally and trusting everything plainly at face value. The existence of the contradiction you're pointing out should be evidence that you need to think a level deeper, i.e., that you need to look at actions more than words. There's an incredibly easy resolution of the contradiction that is troubling you, and it's already been pointed out clearly above.
> The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.
Tomorrow he could change his mind to "we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement." the issue is that he wants Anthropic to change the use terms because "We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions."
And yet, if that statement were true, and not a lie, we would not be here right now, discussing their insistence upon being able to use software for precisely those things.
Is a pundit/politician lying to you a new experience?
The DoD is explicitly asking for those things, by forcing contract renegotiation towards a contract that is identical in every way, except removing the prohibition on those things.
If the DoD did not want those things, it would not be forcing a contract renegotiation to include them, at great cost to the government.
There are enough idiots involved who "heard about this AI thing" that would demand someone make a Claude-based kill bot. Do not underestimate the disconnect from reality of senior military leadership. They easily forget that everyone who works for them are legally obligated to laugh at their jokes.
Because mass surveillance has been happening by every tech company under every president since George W. Bush, and despite everybody trying to stop it they haven’t been able to.
OpenAI has already said that they’ll give up whatever info the government wants if they’re issued a subpoena; they don’t have a choice.
Companies have to comply with subpoenas (unless they can beat them in court, and with an alternative of going to jail). Subpoenas are supposed to be targeted at individuals and need some kind of process, usually judicial, each time one is issued. Mass surveillance - the Anthropic blog post raises the possibility of using AI to classify the political loyalties of every citizen - is a different thing.
A subpoena isn't "simply asking." Subpoena literally means "under penalty" in Latin. If the company does not comply they will be held in contempt of court and someone may well go to jail.
You make a valid point. Dario suggests that DoD wants to have the capacity to do domestic surveillance and autonomous killing. Sean Parnell said the DoD doesn't want those capacities. These statements are in conflict. Them talking past each other is one possibility. Without much evidence except the track record of the Trump administration, I think it is much more likely that Sean Parnell is lying.
[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war