Thread

U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk

499 points · 900 comments · cramer4next

ApolloFortyNine · 1790356118 · focus · HN ↗
I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.
This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.
You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.
1. burkaman · 1790356920 · focus · HN ↗
  The reason it appears corrupt is that OpenAI has the exact same restrictions (<a href="https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war/" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-o...) but was not declared a supply chain risk. If two vendors have the same restrictions and they only designate one, then the designation must be arbitrary and/or capricious.
  Edit: I was wrong, the statement I linked is extremely dishonest and I was misled. The contract language lower down makes it clear that there are no "red lines", and OpenAI products can in fact be used for mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, and social credit systems as long as they are considered legal.
  1. paulddraper · 1790357148 · focus · HN ↗
    Were they the same restrictions though?
    OpenAI just said no surveillance of U.S. persons.
    Anthropic could have gone further; I think it's likely they did.
    burkaman · 1790357463 · focus · HN ↗
    There are three restrictions:
    > No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
    > No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
    > No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).
    These are stronger than Anthropic's restrictions (<a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war" rel="nofollow">https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war), as OpenAI says themselves: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. [...] Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract."
    Edit: I was wrong, see my original comment. Sorry.
    paulddraper · 1790357725 · focus · HN ↗
    The article only cites language for surveillance.
    The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.
  2. CodeWriter23 · 1790357559 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you think OpenAI's terms for the DoD are published on a website? Pretty sure when Anthropic got zapped, OpenAI sent DoD a memo 500ms later saying they wouldn't restrict use.
    Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.
  3. hintymad · 1790357581 · focus · HN ↗
    I thought the difference is that clearly written rules or SLAs are acceptable and can even be negotiated before signing a contract, but having a person, in this case Amodei himself, manually approve DOJ's usage case by case with his own moral judgement after a contract is signed is not okay.
    noahbp · 1790373649 · focus · HN ↗
    No one wanted case-by-case veto ability at Anthropic. The red lines were made clear ahead of time: No use of Anthropic models for autonomous weapons (Skynet) or mass-domestic surveillance, negotiated in the agreement.
    OpenAI, xAI, and Google happily agreed to DoW contracts which allow both of those use cases.
  4. gruez · 1790357656 · focus · HN ↗
    >OpenAI has the exact same restrictions
    No it doesn't. Specifically OpenAI had a "all lawful purposes" clause (which plausibly includes the existing mass surveillance apparatus), but Anthropic did not.
    burkaman · 1790358253 · focus · HN ↗
    You're right, what an incredibly dishonest statement. The actual contract language in there makes it clear that there are no restrictions. My bad.

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