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. neuronexmachina · 1790377890 · focus · HN ↗

         JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

         1. Loquebantur · 1790378617 · focus · HN ↗

            OP makes a category error already by ignoring the part where the US military/government wants to commit crimes (against humanity and whatnot) and pretends, questioning that would be a crime.

            You here make another one by pretending, AI was just some random tool, like a screwdriver or a programming language.

            AI can make decisions autonomously that would otherwise require a human. Like selecting people to be murdered by drone strike based on arbitrary criteria. A programming language by itself, JAVA, cannot do that.

            1. grim_io · 1790379413 · focus · HN ↗

               There is nothing stopping any plain old algorithm being used for the same. The difference is that people decide, for whatever reason, to use the tool or to not use it.
            2. RossBencina · 1790385235 · focus · HN ↗

               AI can make decisions all it likes. I if you don't integrate it with the drone strike MCP server it's as impotent as a JVM without any code to execute.
            3. nradov · 1790392513 · focus · HN ↗

               An if/then statement or random number generator in Java can make decisions autonomously. Heck, the US military has deployed fully autonomous weapons since at least 1979 (long before LLMs existed).

               <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vp4association.com&#x2F;aircraft-information-2&#x2F;32-2&#x2F;mk-60-captor-mine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vp4association.com&#x2F;aircraft-information-2&#x2F;32-2&#x2F;m...

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.