5 ms·

TBH I am sad that Anthropic is changing its stance, but in the current world, if you even care about LLM safety, I feel that this is the right choice — there’s

TBH I am sad that Anthropic is changing its stance, but in the current world, if you even care about LLM safety, I feel that this is the right choice — there’s too many model providers and they probably don’t consider safety as high priority as Anthropic. (Yes that might change, they can get pressurized by the govt, yada yada, but they literally created their own company because of AI safety, I do think they actually care for now) If we need safety, we need Anthropic to be not too far behind (at least for now, before Anthropic possibly becomes evil), and that might mean releasing models that are safer and more steerable than others (even if, unfortunately, they are not 100% up to Anthropic’s goals) Dogmatism, while great, has its time and place, and with a thousand bad actors in the LLM space, pragmatism wins better.

ashtonshears 8mo ago
Do you work at Anthropic, or know people who do? I genuinly curious why they are so holy to you, when to me I see just another tech company trying to make cash Edit: Reading some of the linked articles, I can see how Anthropic CEO is refusing to allow their product for warfare (killing humans), which is probably a good thing that resonates with supporting them
- nradov 8mo ago
  How is it a good thing to refuse to provide our warfighters with the tools that they need? I mean if we're going to have a military at all then we owe it to them to give them the best possible weapons systems that minimize friendly casualties. And let's not have any specious claims that LLMs are somehow special or uniquely dangerous: the US military has deployed operational fully autonomous weapons systems since the 1970s.
  - nozzlegear 8mo ago
    Why are you asking this question? You know what the answer is, you've just arbitrarily decided that it's specious in an attempt to frame rebuttals as unreasonable.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      I'm open to reasonable rebuttals but all the rebuttals that I've seen so far are simply uninformed.
      - s1artibartfast 8mo ago
        1. You don't believe in the mission or direction of US warfighters 2. Supporting warfighters is developmentally distinct from what you want your corporate competences and direction are. 3. you don't want military to be more safe an capable.
  - yunwal 8mo ago
    This is the US military we’re talking about so 95% of what they do is attacking people for oil. They don’t “need” more of anything, they’re funded to the tune of a trillion dollars a year, almost as much as every other military in the world combined. What holy mission do you think they’re going to carry out with the assistance of LLMs?
    - nradov 8mo ago
      That's a total non sequitur. If you think the military is being tasked with the wrong missions, or too many missions, then take that up with the civilian political leadership. But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Personally I favor a less interventionist foreign policy. But that change can only come about through the political process, not by unaccountable corporate employees making arbitrary decisions about how certain products can be used.
      - ahtihn 8mo ago
        > But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Of course it is. Think about it this way: if you could guarantee that the military suffers no human losses when attacking a foreign country, do you think that's going to more or less foreign interventions? The tools available to the military influence policy, these things are linked. US military is already overwhelmingly powerful, there's 0 reason to make it even more powerful.
        nradov 8mo ago
        That's so delusional. The US military is currently preparing for a potential conflict with China to stop an invasion with Taiwan. They don't have anything near "overwhelming force" for that mission: recent simulations put it about even at best. People who believe they don't need any improved autonomous weapons are simply uninformed.
        ashtonshears 8mo ago
  - chris_wot 8mo ago
    "How is it a good thing to refuse to provide our warfighters with the tools that they need?" Perhaps you should consider that this is a loaded question. I don't think HN needs this sort of Argumentum ad Passiones.
- dannersy 8mo ago
  Let us not pretend that they won't be used for war eventually. If they cave immediately under pressure, then this is an inevitably.
saghm 8mo ago
> If we need safety, we need Anthropic to be not too far behind (at least for now, before Anthropic possibly becomes evil) I don't think it's going to be as easy to tell as you think that they might be becoming evil before it's too late if this doesn't seem to raise any alarm bells to you that this is already their plan
salawat 8mo ago
The world would be so much nicer if there were just fewer pragmatists shitting up the place for everyone. We might actually handle half our externalities.

ashtonshears 8mo ago

Do you work at Anthropic, or know people who do? I genuinly curious why they are so holy to you, when to me I see just another tech company trying to make cash Edit: Reading some of the linked articles, I can see how Anthropic CEO is refusing to allow their product for warfare (killing humans), which is probably a good thing that resonates with supporting them

nradov 8mo ago
How is it a good thing to refuse to provide our warfighters with the tools that they need? I mean if we're going to have a military at all then we owe it to them to give them the best possible weapons systems that minimize friendly casualties. And let's not have any specious claims that LLMs are somehow special or uniquely dangerous: the US military has deployed operational fully autonomous weapons systems since the 1970s.
- nozzlegear 8mo ago
  Why are you asking this question? You know what the answer is, you've just arbitrarily decided that it's specious in an attempt to frame rebuttals as unreasonable.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    I'm open to reasonable rebuttals but all the rebuttals that I've seen so far are simply uninformed.
    - s1artibartfast 8mo ago
      1. You don't believe in the mission or direction of US warfighters 2. Supporting warfighters is developmentally distinct from what you want your corporate competences and direction are. 3. you don't want military to be more safe an capable.
- yunwal 8mo ago
  This is the US military we’re talking about so 95% of what they do is attacking people for oil. They don’t “need” more of anything, they’re funded to the tune of a trillion dollars a year, almost as much as every other military in the world combined. What holy mission do you think they’re going to carry out with the assistance of LLMs?
  - nradov 8mo ago
    That's a total non sequitur. If you think the military is being tasked with the wrong missions, or too many missions, then take that up with the civilian political leadership. But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Personally I favor a less interventionist foreign policy. But that change can only come about through the political process, not by unaccountable corporate employees making arbitrary decisions about how certain products can be used.
    - ahtihn 8mo ago
      > But it's not a valid reason to deny the warfighters the best possible weapons systems. Of course it is. Think about it this way: if you could guarantee that the military suffers no human losses when attacking a foreign country, do you think that's going to more or less foreign interventions? The tools available to the military influence policy, these things are linked. US military is already overwhelmingly powerful, there's 0 reason to make it even more powerful.
      - nradov 8mo ago
        That's so delusional. The US military is currently preparing for a potential conflict with China to stop an invasion with Taiwan. They don't have anything near "overwhelming force" for that mission: recent simulations put it about even at best. People who believe they don't need any improved autonomous weapons are simply uninformed.
        ashtonshears 8mo ago
- chris_wot 8mo ago
  "How is it a good thing to refuse to provide our warfighters with the tools that they need?" Perhaps you should consider that this is a loaded question. I don't think HN needs this sort of Argumentum ad Passiones.
dannersy 8mo ago
Let us not pretend that they won't be used for war eventually. If they cave immediately under pressure, then this is an inevitably.

saghm 8mo ago

> If we need safety, we need Anthropic to be not too far behind (at least for now, before Anthropic possibly becomes evil) I don't think it's going to be as easy to tell as you think that they might be becoming evil before it's too late if this doesn't seem to raise any alarm bells to you that this is already their plan

salawat 8mo ago

The world would be so much nicer if there were just fewer pragmatists shitting up the place for everyone. We might actually handle half our externalities.