Thread

1. petcat · 1790353704 · focus · HN ↗

   I still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.

   Isn't this basically what Anthropic wanted?

   1. HarHarVeryFunny · 1790354633 · focus · HN ↗

      Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.

      1. theptip · 1790355977 · focus · HN ↗

         Every private citizen or corporation gets to do business (or not) with the military on their own terms. This is the difference between totalitarianism and a free country.

         Anthropic’s position is also known as “having terms of service”.

         To be clear the existing, signed ToS terms that Trump balked at were:

         1. No mass surveillance of US civilians - illegal but we have all read the Snowden papers.

         2. Fully unmanned kill chains on autonomous weapons - Anthropic have even stated they will support this eventually, they just didn’t think their models were ready and didn’t want the obvious, inevitable blowback.

         The DoD is within its rights to cancel the contract if it doesn’t like the terms that it previously signed.

         1. andrewla · 1790356838 · focus · HN ↗

            The concern, I think, in its most generous terms, is that they can't buy Anthropic's service the way the could, say, a wrench, because Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability (even transitively, through other vendors) to use their models if they determined that they do not like what the military is doing with that or if it violates their interpretation of the terms of service.

            This seems like a definitional supply chain risk.

            1. Firaxus · 1790358210 · focus · HN ↗

               By that expansive definition, any cloud software provider can do the same thing and so should also be a supply chain risk.

               This whole fiasco is happening because the defense dept wanted to use anthropic models in a way not allowed in the existing contract. Anthropic stuck to the contract, and the def dept tried to be punitive about it.

               If they can’t get what they want from the seller, fine go to a different seller, but the supply chain risk is just government overreach.

               1. andrewla · 1790359006 · focus · HN ↗

                  I think I mostly agree here -- any cloud provider or frankly SaaS system carries a similar risk. The question is whether they want to explicitly make that part of their terms of service, and in addition have made public statements about their willingness to apply those terms of service.

                  AWS GovCloud I believe promises the opposite. They could still do it, in terms of the capability itself, but then they'd be subject to both civil, criminal, and possibly even military consequences. Whereas Anthropic would be shielded from those consequences by the terms of their agreement (presumably; I'm not up to speed on the specifics of their contractual demands. This is just based on the context from this article and the previous appeals case that ruled against the government).

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