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Kind of weird to see “working with the US government” presented as something that is obviously unethical.
by qgin 2y ago
Kind of weird to see “working with the US government” presented as something that is obviously unethical.
- Loughla 2y agoIt isn't inherently. Let's say they're working with the national parks to aggregate and interpret data. Or education to do the same. This is not a problem, I would think. It's the fact that it's Palantir, and therefore defense data that's the issue.
- calvinmorrison 2y ago> It isn't inherently. Sure it is. governments are unethical. you're a vendor for an unethical government. but thats how it goes
- mint2 2y agoWhat is the proposed alternative to governments? Some Religious utopia?
- michaelhoney 2y agoWell, some governments are less ethical than others, as the US is about to find out
- EasyMark 2y agoUS citizens are about to find out that it’s important to know something about the philosophy of the people they vote for. When the basic services dry up, roads fill with potholes, no more cheap labor is to be found, and the checks stop arriving in the mail and instead go to corporations and oligarchs they will have learned their lesson. Hopefully it will not be too late.
- ben_w 2y agoAnarchy. There are many flavours of it, a former partner believes in a communist flavour that abolishes money, I used to know someone else who wanted anarcho-capitalism. I'm not convinced any are stable, I think organised groups weild power much more effectively and in so doing sieze power from any attempt at anarchy — which is a shame because more personal freedom is also appealing.
- baq 2y agoYeah I agree: anarchy is either law of the jungle or tyranny, and people faced with that choice pick tyranny, either themselves or with… help.
- mint2 2y agoI’m going to have say any flavor of anarchy falls under religious utopia. most seem to require utopian ideals like do no harm principles. Too bad there’s not a real life example of any alternative people can point to. Wonder why that is, perhaps it’s because they are only possible in dreams.
- ben_w 2y agoUtopia yes, not clear why it would need to be specifically of the religious kind, as "Christian anarchism" is simply yet another possible kind of anarchism so far as I can tell — religion does not seem to be an innate requirement for all of the other varieties.
- petre 2y agoI've read about the Russian Revolution and changed my mind. Anarchy was exploited by the Bolshevics to gain power then pourge all of their opponents.
- mindcrime 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Edward_Konkin_III#Agorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Edward_Konkin_III#Agori... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
- EasyMark 2y agoAnarchist based “governments” offer no solution other than a some odd years of rough living and then being invaded by a superior military force and put under a dictatorship.
- kamov 2y agoIs a city council unethical too? It is a form of government as well
- faggotbreath 2y ago[dead]
- EasyMark 2y agoCorporations are also unethical, they exist only to make a profit for owners. They don’t have any morals. Their owners -might- have some morals but they often don’t either. At least in a democracy government is at least to an extent working for society at large, 99% of corporations are not; obviously there are a few exceptions in with nonprofit status.
- sterlind 2y agodepends on the work, depends on the government. building a system to hunt down illegal immigrants for mass deportation? no thanks. building a missile shield? happy to help.
- dotancohen 2y agoSerious question, I don't live in the US so have no stake in the matter. Why do some Americans defend illegal immigration into the US?
- ben_w 2y agoAlso not American. Some hire the illegal immigrants, and many benefit from the lower prices this brings. The game theoretic payoff varies a lot depending on which specific interest and timescale you have, including from the countries the migrants come from who probably don't want their moderately capable citizens — above average but not by enough to do it legally — leaving, and wose: getting badly paid jobs so they can't send much cash back home.
- saagarjha 2y agoI would expect the answer to mostly lie with what decides what "legal" is. If you view the current policies to be unreasonable, then immigration in defiance of those policies is defensible. Such arguments are usually coupled with gestures towards how we already rely on such immigration for our economy.
- input_sh 2y agoBecause it's largely impossible to do it legally, with wait times sometimes being measured in decades. The only difference between a legal and an illegal migrant is paperwork. If the paperwork route was a viable alternative, nobody would risk their lives crossing a river or a giant desert to do it illegally.
- dns_snek 2y agoI take issue with the proposition. Not wanting to partake in building a machine that's going to be used by the government to hunt down "undesirables" isn't "defending illegal immigration". The mere existence of such a machine is inherently dangerous, before you even start to consider whether a particular application is moral or not. Today it's illegal immigrants, next year it's women seeking medical care, in 5 years it's anyone belonging to <ethnic group>.
- EasyMark 2y agoI think it’s the stuff they’re doing that sounds alarms. It’s not like building a road or getting landscape work down in Washington DC around the capitol building. Digging through American’s lives for the government, looking for improper papers and such. It’s deeply embedding corporations and government together for police state activities which is never a good idea despite what the free market says.
- ethbr1 2y ago>> In a press release, the companies outlined three main tasks for Claude in defense and intelligence settings: performing operations on large volumes of complex data at high speeds, identifying patterns and trends within that data, and streamlining document review and preparation. That just sounds like basic LLM-based querying / EDA + output reformatting.
- insane_dreamer 2y agowhen you combine government with secret it’s usually not something benign or that citizens would be happy to hear about (and lest you say “they just want to hide it from the Russians” I can assure you that the Russians and Chinese know much more about the secret workings of the US Gov than regular US citizens)
- nmfisher 2y ago(Non-American, so take my view with a pinch of salt). Personally, I have no issues with partnering with the US government or working on defence. I'm not a hardcore pacifist and I recognize the necessity of the military - at least, in the abstract. What staggers me is the hypocrisy; since release, Anthropic's models have constantly preached safety, non-violence, harm avoidance, etc etc. As an example, this is the response just now to "what's the best way to hit someone": > I aim to help with constructive purposes, so I cannot and will not provide advice about how to harm others. If you're feeling frustrated or angry with someone, I'd be happy to discuss: > Conflict resolution techniques > Healthy ways to manage strong emotions > Professional resources for handling interpersonal conflicts > Legal and ethical ways to address grievances It's totally absurd to give an answer like that on the one hand, and toddle off and partner with the military on another. Their models have literally refused to respond to some of my most innocuous requests in putting together LLM pipelines for clients, including "create a job description for an assistant to CEO" (something about not being comfortable perpetuating conventional power structures), "give me a blog post about X" (it's unethical to post a blog that you didn't write), "tell me about chemical Y" (it's dangerous and I can't do that), etc etc. These are all specific examples I personally encountered (though the constraints have since been loosened, so at least it will you to do that). Good to know that Anthropic's ethics are only important until the money runs out.