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. comnetxr · 1790361804 · focus · HN ↗

      I think the better analogy is an insane nuclear power plant manager deciding it wants to buy pens to use as neutron-flux regulator rods — because after all, a pen is functionally a pencil and a pencil is made of graphite.

      Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”

      1. roenxi · 1790376607 · focus · HN ↗

         That analogy still makes this sound like a textbook designation. In that situation the pen manufacturer is expected to sell pens without a theory of what will happen next. The person who buys a pen might use it to kill someone or commit horrific legal/moral crimes and that has nothing at all to do with the pen manufacturer.

         I can see how I might reasonably refuse to deal with that pen manufacturer. The pen manufacturer is unreasonably pushy and they're going to be massive trouble to deal with because they're all up in my business in a paranoid way and disrupting my use of their product. Companies have made my never-again list for far smaller slights.

         1. weard_beard · 1790377807 · focus · HN ↗

            Where’s my atomic bomb sold at Walmart?

            1. roenxi · 1790378421 · focus · HN ↗

               I think you might have misread the thread so far. Do you think the US military is buying atomic bombs from a supplier who is going to try and stop them from bombing things on demand? Obviously the bomb makers have to make peace with the fact that their customers may, of their independent initiative, one day detonate the bombs.

               1. lukeschlather · 1790379866 · focus · HN ↗

                  It's been very commonplace in robotics/AI research for vendors to sell robots to the DoD that are explicitly contractually not to be used for killing people.

                  1. jagged-chisel · 1790380981 · focus · HN ↗

                     Citation needed
            2. DivingForGold · 1790385514 · focus · HN ↗

               It's that guy with the long beard and sunglasses that looks like ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, walking out the Wal-Mart door with your suitcase nuke ... the clerk up front near the door was so stunned he didn't even ask to see his receipt

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