6 ms·
Anthropic teams up with Palantir and AWS to sell AI to defense customers
- lukev 2y agoI've said it before and I'll say it again... any company that actually cared about AI "safety" or "alignment", or had any belief that we are on the threshold of AGI, should steadfastly refuse to let it be used in any sort of military or intelligence context. That's literally how you get Skynet, and that's what everyone claims to be worried about, right? Or are they just full of shit
- Eliezer 2y agoSuperintelligence is not the same branch of the tech tree as drones or surveillance.
- vundercind 2y ago> That's literally how you get Skynet, and that's what everyone claims to be worried about, right? Or are they just full of shit It's the latter. They're full of shit both about our current approach to this being capable of becoming Skynet, and about their caring. I mean a handful of individuals might not be, but broadly, that's the state of things. Painting it as so advanced that even the companies building it are scared has been an excellent sales technique, though.
- threetonesun 2y agoIt’ll accidentally shoot the wrong people somewhere in a foreign country, which is already government approved.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI'd rather we build "Skynet" before our adversaries. It's an arms race but not playing has consequences. Everyone would need to agree in tandem to nonproliferation similar to how nukes are handled. Edit: Do you want your sons and daughters to fight an evenly matched (or better equipped) enemy? Fuck no! Because our adversaries show no sign of stopping. I want the odds as overwhelmingly in my favor as possible.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoSkynet canonically killed humans. We don’t want to build Skynet. Skynet is strategic AI gone bad.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI put Skynet in quotes for a reason. Of course we aren't building canonical Skynet.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> any company that actually cared about AI "safety" or "alignment", or had any belief that we are on the threshold of AGI, should steadfastly refuse to let it be used in any sort of military or intelligence context Then they should promptly exit the space and go into, I don’t know, gardening. Economics will force them to anyway. Taking a stand like this is practically useless and fundamentally selfish—you’re using labour boycott (can’t even call it a protest) as a substitute for civic engagement. And it’s naïve—AI is being pursued by multiple militaries. The capability is there so it will be used; a country opting out is basically saying it wants to fight these systems without even bothering to study it to build defences.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago"someone else will do it" is not, has never been, and never will be valid moral reasoning. You are responsible for your own actions, not what someone else might do if you refuse to take actions you consider immoral.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> "someone else will do it" is not, has never been, and never will be valid moral reasoning I’m not saying someone has to do it. I’m saying if you work on AI it’s delusional to think you can keep it from being applied militarily. If you’re opposed to military AI stop building AI. (But don’t pretend you made a difference. You’re absolving yourself. Nothing more.)
- lukev 2y agoOr, hear me out... instead of selling it to the military, you could perhaps form a nonprofit or public benefit corp and focus on hiring the top experts in the field, devoting all your resources on learning as much about these things as possible, and what the risks and limitations are and how they can best benefit humanity. Or maybe you already did that and realized there isn't a danger of AGI, and so are pivoting to a for-profit cash grab before the hype bubble bursts.
- deleted 2y ago
- dtquad 2y agoWhy should the West intentionally sabotage itself like that? China, Russia, and Iran are already experimenting with AI in their drones and missiles.
- 1024core 2y agoDo you think companies in Russia, China, Iran, N Korea, etc. will abide by that?
- ganoushoreilly 2y agoIt's not surprising given the inroads companies like scale.ai have been making into the D.o.D. Partnering with Palantir gives some credibility (debatable) with deploying product etc. Having worked on one of these projects two years ago, back then the waiving of hands for dealing with hallucinations and risks was a bit offputting and at times scary. Hopefully as we deploy these tech stacks we take serious time to do it slow and steady and working out the edge cases and failures.
- elashri 2y agoIt is really interesting that many people in this world seem to refuse to allow AI to insult (or offend) any person but would be okay if AI took part of killing them (if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time of course). I don't share this opinion and would be interested to hear about what is the thought process of people that come to support that. Other than financial aspect (people who actually benefit financially), Is it something like our enemies will use it so we should too ? Does this mean not using that against your enemies that does not use it or what ?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nyokodo 2y ago> refuse to allow AI to insult (or offend) any person but would be okay if AI took part of killing them Liability and regulatory scrutiny are factors. They’re liable about offensive speech but military use cases are an effective shield against liability given that deaths are expected.
- 123yawaworht456 2y ago>They’re liable about offensive speech there's nothing preventing them from implementing a toggleable filter, with a big red warning, geo-restrictions and even age verification if you want to turn it off. it's not legal liability that prevents them from doing that, it's ideology.
- nyokodo 2y ago> there's nothing preventing them from implementing a toggleable filter Which would not placate regulators in all likelihood. Close regulatory scrutiny is a big problem for companies seeking to grow, and a pesky cost for big companies.
- 123yawaworht456 2y agothat would make sense if Anthropic didn't spend the past two years hyping up retarded parrots as literally scifi skynet bullshit, begging the nanny state to step in and regoolate the shit out of retarded parrots industry before the unthinkable happens and a retarded parrot escapes the confinement to destroy the democracy
- blibble 2y agowith consumers showing at best a lack of interest in AI products* (and at worst: total aversion), I suppose you have to sell it to someone... * https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/7/24290268/microsoft-copilot-office-features-microsoft-365 https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/7/24290268/microsoft-copilo...
- citruscomputing 2y agoI highly recommend reading this article about how Israel has been using AI: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ It really brought home for me the real, existing harms this type of technology is already doing in the "defense" space.
- elashri 2y agoUnless Ukraine get occupied and Russia uses systems like that (hopefully neither of those happens) against Ukrainians. There will be a small chance that most of the people will even care about that (even if they hear about that). Part of that is that the mainstream media will not stop talking about how evil this is vs the -almost- complete silence about that now. Hell even your comment and mine have great chances of being flagged to death soon.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoUkraine is my pet war. Nobody cares about either it or Gaza outside a narrow slice of the already-tiny minority that pay attention to foreign affairs. In fact, one of the worst ways to get positive attention for a foreign-policy item is to complain about how it isn’t getting attention—that’s stuff you use to rile up the base.
- consumer451 2y ago> Ukraine is my pet war. Nobody cares about either it... I grew up in Seattle, but I currently live a few hundred km from the russian invasion of Ukraine. Today, a boy who has my first name, his mother, and grandmother were killed by a russian attack on their apartment. [0] This is pure terrorism, by definition. This is an everyday occurrence for the last three years. While I do get emotional about what is happening in Ukraine, my main concern is about my immediate family in Seattle. I am convinced that The West's de-escalation policy in Ukraine has led to what will become the greatest hit to nuclear non-proliferation, ever. Russia could have been easily defeated in first part of the war, instead, we "de-escalated." This proved to any one of our theoretical allies that any country threatened by their neighbors should get nukes to defend themselves asap. This made my Seattle family less safe, and was a mistake. This naive wavering has made all citizens of the USA less safe. </rant> [0] https://bsky.app/profile/faredalmahlool.bsky.social/post/3lahlrpljrd27 https://bsky.app/profile/faredalmahlool.bsky.social/post/3la...
- mannycalavera42 2y agoand here it goes my intention to subscribe to claude
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoIf you participate in the global economy, you contribute to warfare. Hell, if you have kids you contribute to military capacity.
- tjahGdg 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoSchenk is the noun form of a verb. It’s instructing. If you schenkst den Führer children, well, you do just that. German kids fought regardless of their or their parents’ intentions.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agoThat is a reductio ad absurdum... but unforuntately true. Any participation in the economy (in?)directly contributes to the MIC, SV, and other giga-corp that are constantly engaged in the arms race to create something we know we shouldn't. Every ad you scroll past, or slightly pause to scroll past, every metric they've vacuumed, can now be used to infer more valuable data, and entrench the players. "Every day we stray further from God's light" Every minute that passes, the first commandment (of any religion) gets closer to being incorrigibly broken.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoMy point is boycotting, particularly individually, doesn’t make a difference. It might make you feel good, in which case, sure, do it.
- 2y ago
- Jaepa 2y agoSo I have some concerns. There is of course the safety & morality of AI in military, the potential issues for hallucinations, environmental concerns, etc. But I'm more worried about the ability to defer accountability for terrible acts to a software bug.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Meta Permits Its A.I. Models to Be Used for U.S. Military Purposes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42048009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42048009
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: U.S. military makes first confirmed OpenAI purchase for war-fighting forces https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41999029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41999029
- maronato 2y ago> I cannot assist with planning military operations or analyzing top secret military data, as this could lead to loss of life. I aim to help prevent harm, not cause it. - Claude, before selling out to Defense
- manquer 2y agoThe implicit part of that and all such statements is "unless you pay for it" Why is anyone surprised that soul-less corporations that exists only to make money for its investors have no morals? Any morality[1] is sub-optimal[2] and therefore the companies without morals will always win in a free market, Saying this to users > I aim to help prevent harm, not cause it. Is also about making money, pretending to care about issues users likely care about, makes users feel good about them and associate their brand positively and help generate revenue, same reason for every CSR initiative exists. [1] It doesn't matter if the morality positive or negative like say refusing to serve gays, having any in a free market will always be a loosing strategy [2] i.e. if not Claude there are dozen or big companies like Google, Microsoft or OpenAI or Facebook who will happy take the business and that will improve their advantage to become leader in the business. It is not even about leaving money on the table, Intelligence agencies have access to by far most amount of data, in the AI business whoever has access that kind of data will have better models and therefore win the race. Self regulation cannot solve any of these problems for this reason. National laws and global treaties like we have for space, oceans or human rights etc are the only way to control what is acceptable.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> National laws and global treaties like we have for space, oceans or human rights etc are the only way to control what is acceptable War is inevitable absent a global monopoly on violence. We have never outlawed a useful military technology through treaties.
- sublimefire 2y agoIt was done for years already, from ML in rockets to drones that follow targets and to face CV in surveillance systems. I am not sure how much is used in modern fighter jets. The only difference is that now public cloud vendors are going in but at the same time I doubt Claude will be used to steer the rockets, the rate of error is too high.
- rglover 2y agoI love what Anthropic and Dario are doing and from a business perspective this makes perfect sense. But AI is the last thing the military should be touching. If there's even a half percent chance that a mistake is made, it could be irreversibly destructive. Doubly so if "trusting the AI" becomes a defacto standard decades down the road. Even scarier is that "the AI told us to do it" is basically a license to cause chaos with zero accountability.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> If there's even a half percent chance that a mistake is made, it could be irreversibly destructive Yes, that’s war. And soldiers with scopes have a hell of a higher error rate than 0.5%. > scarier is that "the AI told us to do it" is basically a license to cause chaos with zero accountability Only to the extent following orders is. (Which is, to be clear, pretty unconstrained.)
- oksurewhynot 2y agoSorry this is the same company whose application mentions safety/alignment/ethics like 20 times and asked how applicants will uphold those principles?
- youoy 2y agoThe mental gymnastics that people working for Anthropic will have to do to ethically align with this is going to be interesting.
- gkahgr 2y agoI think we are already witnessing interesting mental contortions or public relations in various comments here. Either from Anthrophic or from general AI hawks. I'd humbly suggest the slogan: Military applications are PhilAnthrophic!
- youoy 2y agoIt has always been easier to refuse to do things when you don't have the option to do them, or it doesn't make any difference, than when you have the option and the financial interests are in place. See for example "Safely aligned" Anthropic [0] and "non-profit Open"AI . [0] https://www.anthropic.com/news/core-views-on-ai-safety https://www.anthropic.com/news/core-views-on-ai-safety > Furthermore, rapid AI progress will be disruptive to society and may trigger competitive races that could lead corporations or nations to deploy untrustworthy AI systems. The results of this could be catastrophic, either because AI systems strategically pursue dangerous goals, or because these systems make more innocent mistakes in high-stakes situations.
- historian101 2y agoFor the record, a similar move by Anthropic was predicted by several people just four months ago and vehemently denied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802334 Yet another "conspiracy theory" came true.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWhere are the denials?
- megous 2y agoFuck every company whose leadership sees acts like killing whole extended families regularly for a year, even 100-200 people with the same family name at once as recently as week ago, everyone without distinction, and still decide to sell their shit to the perpetrators.
- solarkraft 2y agoSo much for the „good guys of AI“ reputation
- deepsquirrelnet 2y ago> The Defense Department’s IL6 is reserved for systems containing data that’s deemed critical to national security and requiring “maximum protection” against unauthorized access and tampering. Information in IL6 systems can be up to “secret” level — one step below top secret. Is the thinking here that they’ll use it to read and somehow act (warnings systems, notifications) on highly classified information that can’t be disseminated? I don’t have a good grasp of what this looks like.
- ganoushoreilly 2y agoThink more along the lines of operational planning in a quasi automated sense. Getting rid of Analysts.