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As someone whose has been part of a company that has "signed" one of these large deals before, let me tell you that it doesn't mean the DoD is giving these comp
by ghc 1y ago
As someone whose has been part of a company that has "signed" one of these large deals before, let me tell you that it doesn't mean the DoD is giving these companies $200M. If one of the companies is wildly successful, sure. But none of it is guaranteed money and the initial budget is likely 10-100x smaller than the cap.
- leakycap 1y agoI believe you, but also: seems it isn't even worth the bad press for 10-100x less.
- bgwalter 1y agoMisanthropic wants to get the foot in the door, like the others. The majority of people hate chatbots and surveillance is the only viable path. It won't fix the lack of NATO 155mm shells though.
- leakycap 1y ago> The majority of people hate chatbots and surveillance is the only viable path. What are you considering when you formed this opinion? I find myself on the more cautious side of the equation, but AI seems popular even among my non-techy friends and family.
- ghc 1y agoIf you look at most of the research postings from the DoD, they are really looking for LLMs to parse old PDFs and write new reports. Pretty sure they figured out the surveillance thing way before LLMs. I think the reams of documentation that go into something like the construction of a ship is, however, an unsolved problem.
- dmoy 1y agoInitial budget still bigger than a sbir/sttr phase 2 though. Different grant award structure for not-small companies, but my brain also breaks a little bit because anthropic isn't that far above the sbir employee # cap, but the $$ numbers are so big
- ghc 1y agoIt's closer in structure to a sbir phase 3, however. If I read between the lines, the DoD isn't looking to do research, they're likely desperate to find a way to deploy and run SOTA models in disconnected environments. If you look at all the recent LLM-focused SBIR/STTR topics, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that DoD orgs are drowning in paperwork and want to automatically synthesize reports. Actually getting an LLM cleared for use might be the hurdle they're looking to overcome.
- dmoy 1y agoOh good point Traditionally there wasn't (for sbir/sttr) any kind of path for direct-to-phase3 like there is/was for skipping phase 1. But I guess some fires under certain butts can cut even DoD red tape lol. Or also, bigger contracts just don't follow the same procedures anyway