Thread

1. 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. wand3r · 1790357520 · focus · HN ↗

      > This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike order

      I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.

      1. superxpro12 · 1790358780 · focus · HN ↗

         "the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.

         The moral and ethical scale of the issue makes this far different than someone buying a pen.

         1. palmotea · 1790361523 · focus · HN ↗

            > "the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.

            If Lockheed could brick its planes if the US planned to use them for military action it disagreed with (and showed some indication they couldn't be trusted not to do it), would they be a supply chain risk?

            It is not the role of a defense contractors to have oversight and control power over the military they're supplying.

            1. rockskon · 1790367494 · focus · HN ↗

               The military could just use different AI models for the purposes Anthropic does not want its models used for.

               Purposes Anthropic already spelled out in contract form.

               1. firesteelrain · 1790368851 · focus · HN ↗

                  Correct so what’s wrong with that? Plenty of open weight models to use

                  1. Scramblejams · 1790444230 · focus · HN ↗

                     Open weight doesn't mean they won't resist tasks.

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