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. tcdent · 1790355688 · focus · HN ↗

      As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.

      Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question, and have spent centuries refining their practices. Deferring that to a private company is actually a major regression and a concerning role to pass on to the public regardless.

      FWIW I am not pro military, but it's a prominent part of human culture and not going away anytime soon. I do understand the nature of professions, however, and only one of these groups has made the interpretation of this question their specialization.

      1. everforward · 1790360081 · focus · HN ↗

         Militaries have a lot of experience, and an exceptionally poor track record.

         I don’t remember the last war that didn’t have credible evidence of war crimes occurring. Were bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran, Iraq had Abu Ghraib among all the Collateral Damage stuff, the Highway of Death in the Gulf was probably a war crime, Vietnam had My Lai, WWII was the advent of carpet bombing civilian infrastructure. I can’t think of any for Korea, but I also know very little so that doesn’t say much.

         We still haven’t charged anyone for the second strike on that fishing boat in South America, and I haven’t heard a single rationale for why that’s not a war crime other than “fog of war”.

         The US doesn’t even really have a meaningful system for finding and prosecuting these, because we aren’t signatories for the ICC and have a bill saying we’ll invade if they charge one of our service members with a war crime. We aren’t basically the furthest thing from having any experience prosecuting war crimes. I can probably count on my fingers the number of cases we’ve tried. We rarely charge our own service members, and we usually kill foreign combatants rather than capture and charge them.

         1. daedrdev · 1790378853 · focus · HN ↗

            The US could carpet bomb their enemies like they did in WW2, instead they pursue one of the lowest civilian casualty methods of in the history of the world, and nobody even cares because somehow that’s not good enough

            1. everforward · 1790460043 · focus · HN ↗

               Bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime because the end state is the same as bombing civilians. Killing power shuts down hospitals and emergency responders (generators run out eventually) and desalination plants. The military is largely unphased, they’re the first ones to get gas for generators.

               Also, this is carpet bombing. Carpet bombing is the targeting of civilian infrastructure with effectively willful ignorance of the collateral damage.

               We started a war knowing the only way to win was either boots on the ground or war-criming our adversary into submission. We don’t get to pretend our hands are tied and we have to send out the bombers. We don’t have to do this because Iraq forces us to, we have to do this because we elected a man who can barely read Post It notes and ignored half a century of military intelligence. We are at fault for every dollar of damage caused to infrastructure and every life lost.

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