26 ms·
We Will Not Be Divided
- yayr 8mo agoIt's good that there are still empathic humans in the decision and build chain when it comes to AI systems...
- wosined 8mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dang 8mo agoPersonal attacks aren't allowed here. Perhaps you don't owe AI tycoons whose names start with A better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mrcwinn 8mo agoI see comments like this all the time on HN, including between community members. Why are you showing up now? Altman may be former YC and friends with Paul Graham, but he’s nevertheless a public figure and does plenty to deserve ridicule. Are we allowed, for example, to call Trump an insecure man with orange skin and tiny hands? Is that a violation of our allowed speech?
- dang 8mo ago> I see comments like this all the time on HN, including between community members That's bad, and I'd like to see links to those. > Why are you showing up now? If you mean why do I respond to A but not B, it's usually just that I saw A but didn't see B. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted to HN—there's far too much. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, you can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com [1]. > Are we allowed, for example, to call Trump an insecure man with orange skin and tiny hands? That's certainly a cliché, and it's hard to see how repetition of tropes fits with the intellectual curiosity that we're optimizing for (or trying to!) [2]. Curiosity withers under repetition and fries under indignation [3]. I think, though, that the issue with a political cliché is rather different than posting that someone "doesn't look human". [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=curiosity%20fries%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- hedayet 8mo agoAltman is also on Paul Graham's legendary founders list. I hope that clears up a thing or two.
- wosined 8mo agoIt was a joke Paul.
- dang 8mo agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=intent%20communicate%20burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- jfengel 8mo agoGood luck with that. I just don't see either Google or OpenAI listening to their employees on this. They might have their own reasons for not wanting to help build Skynet, but if they don't, I'm sure those employees can readily be replaced with somebody more compliant.
- nullbyte 8mo ago"He will not divide us!"
- codepoet80 8mo agoNicely done. Hold this line — there’s got to be one somewhere.
- bcooke 8mo agoI'd love to see this extended to any American regardless of past/present employment with Google or OpenAI
- general_reveal 8mo agoWould you like to see this extended globally? Could such a spirit exist multinationally? It’s asking a lot, because you’d be asking for a lot of courage from places like China, India, Russia, Middle East … anywhere that’s not Europe basically.
- bcooke 8mo agoWell yes, but context matters here and this is the US government's decision to take with a US-based company. While I understand why it matters for folks affiliated with prominent AI companies in particular to sign this, the more the American people stand together, the more pressure I think that puts on our government to act responsibly. Idealistic and naive? Probably. But sometimes grassroots efforts do spark change, and it's high time the people of the USA start living up to the first word in our country's name. Anyways, to answer your question directly: I welcome all the fine people of the world everywhere to join in what this open letter stands for. Unfortunately, it's abundantly clear to many of us Americans that the current administration doesn't care what we think, never mind what people outside our country do. So I'll just start with the group that this department (in theory) is supposed to represent.
- yoyohello13 8mo agoI hope Anthropic will survive this. If they don’t it will just be perfect proof that you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.
- fourthark 8mo agoMost survive by bending. See e.g. Google and surveillance a decade ago.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- belter 8mo ago>> you cannot be both moral and successful in the US. I assumed the use of massive scraped datasets, with copyrighted material and without consent, to train large AI models, had already established this.
- drdeca 8mo agoMany people don’t think there is a moral case against training a model on copyrighted data without obtaining a license to do that specifically.
- gjsman-1000 8mo ago[flagged]
- voidfunc 8mo agoThe only way they survive is if their board fires the CEO and they bend the knee. The other option is they are given the green light to sell to one of the US Governments trusted partners: Microsoft/Oracle/X.
- bko 8mo ago[flagged]
- 8mo ago
- lovich 8mo agoYou’re kinda already conceding to some of your opponents points when you use legally invalid names like “Department of War” I appreciate the sentiment but don’t preconcede to your opposition by using their framing.
- greenranger 8mo ago[dead]
- mulmen 8mo agoI'm disappointed Anthropic made this mistake as well.
- uniq7 8mo agoIn this case I think the opponents made a huge mistake by calling themselves Department of War, and it's something that can be exploited. Department of Defense was the actual lie, the newspeak term. They were not really defending anything, they were using military power globally for pursuing economic interests. However, it was easy to convince people that the whole endeavor was a good thing, because defending your country against the baddies is good, and you should support anyone doing that (otherwise you'd be a traitor!). Thank you for your service (defending us). On the other hand, the term Department of War is hard to sell, because most people don't want to participate in a war or support someone who wants to start one. Thank you for your service... invading other countries? killing and raping innocents? ransacking resources? This is an irrelevant detail, but if I'd read the title "Department of Defense vs. Meta", I'd first think Meta is leaking confidential info to other countries. However, if I'd read "Department of War vs. Meta", I'd think Meta doesn't want to promote an unnecessary war.
- Vaslo 8mo ago"Legally Invalid" lol - what?
- lovich 8mo agoYeah, it takes an act of Congress to rename a part of the government, normally it’s a milquetoast event like renaming a postal office, but this admin thinks the law doesn’t apply to them. Currently the government executive branch is claiming they have that right and the legislative branch can get fucked. I am taking advice from the current executive admin around names and continuing to call the Department of Defense by their biological name.
- gcanyon 8mo agoNo problem! The DoD^HW will just use DeepSeek! (I wish this were a joke)
- dryarzeg 8mo agoThey've already been using Signal - which is "commercial" app, meaning it's not meant to be used like that - for top-secret (or at least highly sensitive) military communications during the military strikes on Yemen. If that was fake, I apologise, I was deceived. I wouldn't be surprised if things turned out that way again, to be honest. That's something to be expected, actually (IMO).
- verdverm 8mo agoAren't they using the Israeli version of Signal which backs up messages because the law requires it? Pretty sure I remember that from the fumble
- dalemhurley 8mo agoThey are after the models without post training guardrails.
- JshWright 8mo agoThe legal name of the department is still the Department of Defense. The "Department of War" is a preferred name by the administration.
- k12sosse 8mo agoIdentity affirming care now includes avoiding the DODs deadname. What a world.
- dang 8mo agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- MattDaEskimo 8mo agoThis was a brave, heartwarming read. Thank you to the teams
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- davidw 8mo ago"We hope our leaders will..." I realize things are moving quickly, and the stakes are high here, but thinking about what happens if the hopes are not met might be a next step.
- voganmother42 8mo agoTech leaders are a joke
- goku12 8mo agoMore like a nightmare. This isn't happening by accident. They aren't being opportunistic either. They're playing a game that they planned at least two decades ago. If the books they wrote and published openly aren't evidence enough, you can look at the Epstein files. Look past all the obvious horrific crimes in it, and you'll the see signs of their numerous interventions in society through large scale social engineering, that got us to the dystopia we're in now.
- medi8r 8mo agoNeeds a union. With strikes and all that jazz.
- renewiltord 8mo ago[flagged]
- medi8r 8mo agoYeah it would need to be a union run by it's members. Maybe with a constitution. (Please edit comment to remove names incase they want to remove from OP)
- renewiltord 8mo agoThe other unions are also run by their members. And they had a constitution. It's just the truth that most people who join a union are trying to kick out minorities. And when the minorities band together and the majority bands together one of these bands is bigger than the other. And people like to flag kill the truth but it was a union who got the Koreans deported and it was a union that made it so the Chinese couldn't get citizenship. These are facts and the guys who would be their victims haven't forgotten it. Obviously the majority would like to hide this inconvenient truth using the tool this site offers to do that, but it doesn't change the truth, and these people know it.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- PostOnce 8mo agoMy take is that none of the AI companies really care (companies can't care), they just realize that if they go down that road, public opinion will be so vehemently against AI in all forms that it will be regulated out of viability by the electorate. Also, if AI exists, AI will be used for war. The AI company employees are kidding themselves if they think otherwise, and yet they are still building it (as opposed to resigning and working on something else), because in the end, money is the only true God in this world.
- zugi 8mo agoAnthropic does not object to its use for war. In fact Anthropic explicitly allows its semi-autonomous use in war, e.g. for identifying targets. They just won't permit its use for full autonomous war, yet, because they don't believe it's safe enough.
- nxm 8mo agoI'm sure China doesn't care it's not safe... and there's the issue
- PostOnce 8mo agoSince when has war been waged according to the whim of a corporation? The tools will be used however the government wants them to be used. The government makes the laws and wages the wars, and the corporation will follow the law whether it wants to or not. So either you are willing to work on a tool that is not under your control, or you are not.
- zugi 8mo agoIt's an interesting development because wars haven't traditionally been waged predominantly with software. But soon perhaps they will be. While the government is accustomed to complying with software licensing rules, indeed it is not accustomed to being limited in warfare, so the two have now come into an interesting conflict.
- ricksunny 8mo ago
- spuz 8mo agoThey should be collecting signatures from employees at xAI. I think they're probably most likely to fill the space left by Anthropic.
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoEveryone knows anyone who signs this from xAI will be a former employee by tomorrow.
- dalemhurley 8mo agoMy guess is their HR is already monitoring it with instant termination processes in place.
- spuz 8mo agoYou can sign the form anonymously.
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoBoth the automated verification methods depend on Google servers and Google can almost certainly retrieve that data if they want to regardless of if the signers or verifiers delete it.
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoYou're assuming a lot about Elon's ability to assemble and execute a process competently. They will probably end up hiring people off this list and firing them later. I think what is much more interesting is what OpenAI and Google will do. There's probably some threshold of signatories where the companies in question do not fire everyone when they decide they want the DoD's business, the question will be how many people have to sign to cross it... and will enough people sign. I don't think Google would bat an eye at firing 500 people to secure a DoD contract, but would they fire 5,000?
- xvector 8mo ago
- kledru 8mo ago[flagged]
- SanjayMehta 8mo agoTo Infinity! And Beyond! Sorry, I couldn't resist.
- kledru 8mo agoyeah, no problem, I made a lame joke in frustrating situation. I would very much like the petition to have en effect.
- infamouscow 8mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 8mo agoPlease don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hax0ron3 8mo ago>The executive branch can categorize AI technology as equivalent to nuclear weapons technology. Theoretically, but this would run the risk of collapsing the US tech sector, which at this point is a significant part of the strength of the US economy, and thus making it likely that the Republicans will lose power in the next elections.
- infamouscow 8mo agoI don't view that as an additional new risk. Investors are already all-in on AI, despite being one geopolitical event away from apocalypse regarding Taiwan.
- himata4113 8mo agoDoes this mean there is a non zero chance we will get some kind of grok+chinese model mix that's used across the entire US military? Ironic isn't it.
- piskov 8mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- rabbitlord 8mo agoI am not a fan of Anthropic guys, but this time I stand with it. We all should.
- danny_codes 8mo agoIt is a rough precedent that the government can force private citizens to build weapons for them.
- IG_Semmelweiss 8mo agoThe government has always had monopoly over violence. Not only in the US, but everywhere else there is a government. Arthropic is trying to make that a corporate prerogative, which is why its causing such a stir.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Tepix 8mo agoConscientious objectors are recognized under US law
- WhrRTheBaboons 8mo agoUS law is not recognized under this administration
- trinsic2 8mo agoThat doesn't make the above statement any less true and worth mentioning.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 8mo ago
- txrx0000 8mo agoThis is why you can't gatekeep AI capabilities. It will eventually be taken from you by force. It's time to open-source everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Do all of your research in the open. Run 100% transparent labs so that there's nothing to take from you. Level the playing field for good and bad actors alike, otherwise the bad actors will get their hands on it while everyone else is left behind. Start a movement to make fully transparent AI labs the worldwide norm, and any org that doesn't cooperate is immediately boycotted. Stop comparing AI capabilities to nuclear weapons. A nuke cannot protect against or reverse the damage of another nuke. AI capabilities are not like nukes. General intelligence should not be in the hands of a few. Give it to everyone and the good will prevail. Build a world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human, not a corporation or government (which are machiavellian out of necessity). This is humanity's best chance at survival.
- pluc 8mo agoWhen have US corporations (or simply "the US" really) ever done the right thing for humanity?
- 4bpp 8mo ago"What have the Romans ever done for us?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ)
- ted_dunning 8mo agoDonating the first polio vaccine to humanity. Funding the majority of HIV prevention in Africa. The list is long, but you knew that.
- medi8r 8mo agoOpen Source here is not enough as hardware ownership matters. In an open source world, you and I cannot run the 10 trillion param model, but the data center controllers can.
- 8mo ago
- qup 8mo agoHegseth shared a Trump tweet a few hours ago saying they're going to quit doing business with Anthropic. https://x.com/i/status/2027487514395832410 https://x.com/i/status/2027487514395832410
- fzeroracer 8mo agoIt's rather amusing that this is the proverbial 'red line', not y'know, everything else this administration has been tearing up and running roughshod over. Maybe this would've been less of an issue if companies were more proactive about this bullshit in the first place? That's why it's hard for me to feel bad about companies suddenly finding themselves on the receiving end. They dug their grave inch by inch and are suddenly surprised when they get shoved into it.
- thimabi 8mo agoThe problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very competitive AI industry.
- piskov 8mo ago> I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has And where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)
- BitsAndObjects 8mo agoThe UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here. The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).
- thimabi 8mo agoI agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything. At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.
- piskov 8mo agoDo UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?
- BitsAndObjects 8mo ago
- mftb 8mo agoStand your ground.
- verdverm 8mo agoDon't tread on me
- krapp 8mo agoIronically the flag flown mostly by the people who voted for this tyranny. They should reprint it to say "Step on me Daddy."
- verdverm 8mo agoThere's a good one going around with the Anthropic logo replacing the snake https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.com/post/3mfuuogxjpk2b https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.com/post/3mfuuogxjpk2b
- verdverm 8mo agoUse the feedback forms within their platforms to let the companies know your thoughts
- civcounter 8mo ago[flagged]
- drsalt 8mo ago[flagged]
- paulryanrogers 8mo agoWhat makes them appear childish in your view?
- _aavaa_ 8mo agoYes, take disparate sets of employees and like, oh idk unionize while you still have power.
- culi 8mo agoActions like these often lead to unions. Look into the history of how the Kickstarter union came to be. It often starts as collective action in response to a blatant disregard for the values of the workers
- huflungdung 8mo ago[dead]
- Meekro 8mo agoI've gathered that the dispute is over Anthropic's two red lines: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Is there any information (or rumors even) about what the specific request was? I can't believe the government would be escalating this hard over "we might want to do autonomous weapons in the vague, distant future" without a concrete, immediate request that Anthropic was denying. Even if there was a desire for autonomous weapons (beyond what Anduril is already developing), I would think it would go through a standard defense procurement procedure, and the AI would be one of many components that a contractor would then try to build. It would have nothing to do with the existing contract between Anthropic and the Dept of War. What, then, is this really about?
- yoyohello13 8mo agoIt’s about punishing a company that is not complying. It’s a show of force to deter any future objections on moral grounds from companies that want to do business with the US gov.
- layer8 8mo agoMy understanding is that it’s about the contract allowing Anthropic to refuse service when they deem a red line has been crossed. Hegseth and friends probably don’t want any discussions to even start, about whether a red line may be in the process of being crossed, and having to answer to that. They don’t want the legality or ethicality of any operation to be under Anthropic’s purview at all.
- Meekro 8mo agoI think you're right, this isn't about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey's statement on X/Twitter reflects the same idea: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294 https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294 The thinking seems to be that you can't have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilaterally. Imagine if every missile, ship, plane, gun, and defense software builder had their own set of moral red lines and their own remote kill switch for different parts of your defense infrastructure. Palmer would prefer that the President wield these powers through his Constitutional role as commander-in-chief.
- dang 8mo agoHere's the sequence (so far) in reverse order - did I miss any important threads? Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188697 - Feb 2026 (31 comments) I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 - Feb 2026 (872 comments) President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186031 - Feb 2026 (111 comments) Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175931 - Feb 2026 (132 comments) Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121 - Feb 2026 (1527 comments) The Pentagon Feuding with an AI Company Is a Bad Sign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168165 - Feb 2026 (33 comments) Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160226 - Feb 2026 (157 comments) The Pentagon threatens Anthropic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154983 - Feb 2026 (125 comments) US Military leaders meet with Anthropic to argue against Claude safeguards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145551 - Feb 2026 (99 comments) Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587 - Feb 2026 (128 comments)
- jackblemming 8mo agoSo big tech wants to court Trump with millions in donations and now that the big bully they supported is bullying them.. we’re supposed to feel some kind of sympathy? Am I missing something here? Why did Anthropic get involved with the military in the first place?
- trinsic2 8mo agoI missing the actual letter. I think that part of the content is hidden behind some javascript. Can someone post it.
- love2read 8mo agoHow is posting on this website with your full name not career suicide?
- ceroxylon 8mo agoThat's what taking a stand looks like... if any of these employees lose their job, they are welcome to come crash at my place for as long as they would like; they will have a roof over their head and I will cook them 3 meals a day.
- Sivart13 8mo agoNot all tech employers are total weenies who would refuse to hire someone for taking this stance. Most are, but not all.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dmix 8mo agoNot using Claude only weakens the state. Just don’t oblige
- mitch-flindell 8mo agoThe primary purpose of these products is mass surveillance why else would they be allowed to be built ?
- bottlepalm 8mo agoWe all knew AI had the potential to be extremely powerful, and we all perused it anyways. What did we think would happen? The government/military always takes control of the most powerful/dangerous systems. If you work for a defense contractor or under ITAR then you already know this. The right way to deal with this is political - corporate campaign contributions and lobbying. You're not going to be able to fight the military if they think they need something for national security.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- torben-friis 8mo agoAmong other consequences, if Anthropic ends up being killed it’s going to be just another nail in the coffin of trust in America. Companies who subscribed will find themselves without an important tool because the president went on a rant, and might wonder if it’s safe to depend on other American companies.
- skeledrew 8mo agoWhen you put it like that, it makes me almost want to wish for Anthropic to die from this. But the blow to the field in general would be huge, and I benefit from their service as well.
- segmondy 8mo agoAnthropic will just move out of the US. A lot of scientists fled Nazi Germany in the early stages. A lot of them fled to USA and end up being part of the Manhattan project that gave the Abomb that helped US win and end the war. We are going to bleed a lot of AI researches and engineers.
- skeptic_ai 8mo agoUSA can’t just deny the ability to leave if you are deemed to be important for national security?
- KellyCriterion 8mo agoBut they could open up a branch in EU with some people (and their money), and then step by step employ the people from the US in EU, bleeding out the US entity on a long run: At least yet, no one can stop their top scientist to move to another country with the knowledge and just pick up their work in the new conutry.
- WhrRTheBaboons 8mo ago>At least yet, no one can stop their top scientist to move to another country Let's hope so, because I am not so certain.
- blaze998 8mo agoDecember 14, 2024 >After famed investor Marc Andreessen met with government officials about the future of tech last May, he was “very scared” and described the meetings as “absolutely horrifying.” These meetings played a key role on why he endorsed Trump, he told journalist Bari Weiss this week on her podcast. >What scared him most was what some said about the government’s role in AI, and what he described as a young staff who were “radicalized” and “out for blood” and whose policy ideas would be “damaging” to his and Silicon Valley’s interests. >He walked away believing they endorsed having the government control AI to the point of being market makers, allowing only a couple of companies who cooperated with the government to thrive. He felt they discouraged his investments in AI. “They actually said flat out to us, ‘don't do AI startups like, don't fund AI startups,” he said. ... keep making petitions, watch the whole thing burn to the ground when Trump decides to channel the Biden ideas in this field.
- charcircuit 8mo agoImagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn't use against X or Y country. Private companies imposing such demands on our military should not be respected. Having weapons that can randomly detect a false positive and shut themselves down because they think you are using it wrong is a feature I would never want built in. I have also been against these terms of services of restricting usage of AI models. It is ridiculous that these private companies get to dictate what I can or can't do with the tools. No other tools work like this. Every other tools is going to be governed by the legal system which the people of the country have established.
- bcooke 8mo agoTaking principled stands should absolutely be respected.
- charcircuit 8mo agoI can respect a stance while simultaneously calling out how much I dislike it.
- dlev_pika 8mo agoIt sounds like you think that Anthropic is the first company regulating the use of their product. This is not a novelty whatsoever.
- charcircuit 8mo agoNo, but I find it obnoxious as an end user.
- hparadiz 8mo agoThese models will be able to run on a machine in your pocket locally within a few decades.
- Esophagus4 8mo agoThen don’t create a mass surveillance program on Americans and you shouldn’t have to worry about it ;)
- remarkEon 8mo agoThis whole episode is very bizarre. Anthropic appears to be situating themselves where they are set up as the "ethical AI" in the mindspace of, well, anyone paying attention. But I am still trying to figure out where exactly Hegseth, or anyone in DoW, asked Anthropic to conduct illegal domestic spying or launch a system that removes HITL kill chains. Is this all just some big hypothetical that we're all debating (hallucinating)? This[1] appears to be the memo that may (or may not) have caused Hagesth and Dario to go at each other so hard, presumably over this paragraph: >Clarifying "Responsible Al" at the DoW - Out with Utopian Idealism, In with Hard-Nosed Realism. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and social ideology have no place in the DoW, so we must not employ AI models which incorporate ideological "tuning" that interferes with their ability to provide objectively truthful responses to user prompts. The Department must also utilize models free from usage policy constraints that may limit lawful military applications. Therefore, I direct the CDAO to establish benchmarks for model objectivity as a primary procurement criterion within 90 days, and I direct the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment to incorporate standard "any lawful use" language into any DoW contract through which AI services are procured within 180 days. I also direct the CDAO to.ensure all existing AI policy guidance at the Department aligns with the directives laid out in this memorandum. So, the "any lawful use" language makes me think that Dario et al have a basket of uses in their minds that they feel should be illegal, but are not currently, and they want to condition further participation in this defense program on not being required to engage in such activity that they deem ought be illegal. It is no surprise that the government is reacting poorly to this. Without commenting on the ethics of AI-enabled surveillance or non-HITL kill chains, which are fraught, I understand why a department of government charged with making war is uninterested in debating this as terms of the contract itself. Perhaps the best place for that is Congress (good luck), but to remind: the adversary that these people are all thinking about here is PRC, who does not give a single shit about anyone's feelings on whether it's ethical or not to allow a drone system to drop ordinance on it's own. [1] https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-STRATEGY-FOR-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ART...
- moogly 8mo agoWe have international laws and rules of war. We have weapon treaties (well, some of them are expiring). Sure, not everyone is signatory, or even follow the conventions they have ratified, but at least having these things in place makes it even remotely possible to categorize and document violations and start processes towards rulebreakers and antihumanist actions. So I looked into what they cooked up in 2023, plus which countries signed it (scroll down to a link to the actual text). It's an extraordinarily pathetic text. Insulting even. https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-stability/political-declaration-on-responsible-military-use-of-artificial-intelligence-and-autonomy https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-...
- kopirgan 8mo agoWe will not be divided! United in obeying only orders from woke governments, be it on gender ideology, "misinformation", "fact checking" or takedowns, cancellations, blackouts and bans.
- david_shaw 8mo agoI'd prefer to see board (or executive) level signatories over lay employees -- the people who can enforce enterprise policy rather than just voice their opinions -- but this is encouraging to see nonetheless. I can't help but notice that Grok/X is not part of this initiative, though. I realize that frontier models are really coming from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, but it feels like someone is going to give in to these demands. It's incredible how quickly we've devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.
- dfp33 8mo agoIs it really incredible? Only if you're naive. I guess most here are. Governments are paranoid, particularly about losing control and influence over its subjects. This is expected behaviour.
- myko 8mo agoThis is a very different vibe in the US than it has been in living memory.
- wslack 8mo agoBy that logic we should expect all governments to regress to totalitarianism, which hasn’t happened, and isn’t what’s happening here. The question isn’t if some would attempt these behaviors, but rather if we and our democratic structures empower those people or fail to constrain them.
- puchatek 8mo agoDemocratic governments care about this to a degree but only autocratic ones get paranoid.
- avaer 8mo agoHonestly though, would it help if those in charge voiced their honest opinions? The current political climate is this is the kind of thing that will get you "investigated" and charged with crimes. And the government has already threatened that it will commandeer these companies whether they like it or not. If someone in charge wants to make a difference, there might be more effective things to do than to speak out in this instance.
- ripped_britches 8mo agoNo surprise to have not heard anything from xAI
- THESMOKINGUN 8mo ago[dead]
- dataflow 8mo agoWhy are the signing employees (at least the anonymous ones) trusting the creators of this website? What if it was set up by someone who wanted to gather a list of all the dissidents who would silently protest or leave the companies or whatever? Do you know whom you are going to hold accountable if it turns out these folks don't delete your verification data, or share it with your employer, or worse? Also, another warning to anonymous users: it's a little bit naive to trust the "Google Forms" verification option more than the email one, given both employers probably monitor anything you do on your devices, even if it's loading the form. And, in Google's case, they could obviously see what forms you submitted on the servers, too. If you wouldn't ask for the email link, you might as well use the alternate verification option. Anyway - I'm not claiming it's likely that the website creator is malicious, but surely it's not beyond question? The website authors don't even seem to be providing others with the verification that they are themselves asking for. P.S. I fully realize realizing these itself might make fewer people sign the form, which may be unfortunate, but it seems worth a mention.
- abustamam 8mo agoI think it's an important call-out though. Can never be too safe in this landscape.
- rzmmm 8mo agoLooks like it supports alternative proof of employment. They don't require disclosing identity as long as they are convinced you work for these companies.
- dataflow 8mo agoAnd you propose that how exactly? Every method they mention has identity attached to it in some way. They specifically want to be able to deduplicate submissions too, so I don't see what non-identifying options you're imagining they might accept either.
- octoberfranklin 8mo agolet a thousand flowers bloom
- abhijitr 8mo agoThe book "On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th century" by the historian Timothy Snyder is an excellent read for these times. The very first lesson is "Do not obey in advance". It's about how authoritarian power often doesn't need to force compliance, people simply bend the knee in anticipation of being forced. This simply emboldens the authoritarians to go further. I've been disappointed to see many businesses and institutions obeying in advance recently. I hope this moment wakes up the tech community and beyond.
- ozozozd 8mo agoFor companies / billionaires obeying in advance means they are buying their subscription to a period of favors like better contracts, lesser scrutiny over mergers, lighter enforcement of all laws. I’d like to think that they are scared/obeying, but they’re likely just joining an organization.
- trinsic2 8mo agoThis came up in my noncooperation training recently[0]. Thank you for posting this. [0]: https://freedomtrainers.net/ https://freedomtrainers.net/
- renewiltord 8mo agoWell, it looks like OpenAI will be working with the Pentagon: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/pentagon-openai-safety-red-lines-anthropic https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/pentagon-openai-safety-red-... My personal guess is that Sam Altman said he'd let policy violations go without a complaint and Dario Amodei said he wouldn't.
- Esophagus4 8mo agoShame. Although I guess Altman has now fully given up the “for the good of humanity” schtick.
- mythz 8mo agoThese 2 Exceptions shouldn't have to be disputed. At this point I'd go far to say I wouldn't trust any company with my AI history that caves to DoD demands for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. Your AI will know more about you than any other company, not going to be trusting that to anyone who trades ethics for profits.
- snickerbockers 8mo ago>We are the employees of Google and OpenAI, two of the top AI companies in the world. Does this mean you dipshits are going to stop your own domestic surveillance programs? You sold your souls to the devil decades ago, don't pretend like you have principles now.
- ArchieScrivener 8mo agoThe USA showed itself to be a Command Economy that uses 'private enterprise' as a fascade of legitimacy during Covid. Without government spending, employment, and contracts, the USA would be net negative growth. Now the DoD, who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer, wants us to believe they don't have a better Ai than current industry? That is a double sword admission; either they are exposing themselves again as economic decision makers, or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities. Either way, it is beyond time to reform the Military and remove the majority of its leadership as incompetent stewards and strategists. That doesn't even include the massive security vulnerabilities in our supply chains given military needs in various countries. (Taiwan and Thailand)
- duped 8mo ago> who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer not even top 3
- rustystump 8mo agoLet me guess without looking up, debt interest, gov pension, medicare?
- duped 8mo agoClose, DHS, SSA, then Treasury.
- ArchieScrivener 8mo agoYou are 100% wrong. You listed entitlements. National Defense is half of all discretionary spending. Homeland Security is less than 1/6th the budget of DoD alone.
- duped 8mo agoThat's a typo, dhhs. Regardless it's not an inaccurate breakdown of where your tax dollars go.
- focusgroup0 8mo ago> domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight spoiler alert: this is already happening do labs in China have a choice in the matter?
- duped 8mo agoThe Department of War doesn't exist, don't meet the fascists on their own terms at any level. They don't debate or operate in good faith.
- driverdan 8mo agoThis is a nice gesture but completely meaningless. There is absolutely no commitment in this. "We hope our leaders.." has no conditions, no effects. If you're an employee and actually believe in this you need to commit to something, like resigning.
- culi 8mo agoit's the first step towards actually organizing. Reminds me of how the Kickstarter union came to be Any collective action should be encouraged
- driverdan 8mo agoNow that Sam has already ignore this, it's time for OpenAI employees who signed to actually do something https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650
- doodlebugging 8mo agoThe best way for AI companies to fight this would be to remind those who request this capability that the AI knows exactly where they live, where they hang out, and that any one of them can also be targeted by a rogue AI system with no human in the loop. Capabilities that they are requesting could jeopardize them, their personal assets, and their families if something goes haywire or, in the much more common case, where the AI is used as an attack tool by an outside adversary who has gained unauthorized access. All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever. EDIT: It is one level of bad when someone hacks a database containing personal healthcare data on most Americans as happened not long ago. A few years back, the OPM hack gave them all they needed to know about then-current and former government employees and service members and their families. Wait until a state-sponsored actor finds their way into the surveillance and targeting software and uses that back door to eliminate key adversarial personnel or to hold them hostage with threats against the things they value most so that the adversary builds a collection of moles who sell out everything in a vain attempt to keep themselves safe. Of course we already know what happens when an adversary employs these techniques and that is why we are where we are right now.
- ProllyInfamous 8mo agoInstead of Epsteins blackmailing disgustful human nature, it'll be rogue AIs sending selective blackmail, 24/7, to the spiteful among us (e.g. to motivate targeted killings, either by human or machine). >All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever. Hopefully Singularity will be graceful, killing-off everybody simultaneously #PaperclipMaximizer #HimFirst
- doodlebugging 8mo agoThe list of the spiteful most likely already exists and is being used today. All these mass media have been weaponized by various bad actors. Reality is a collection of cycles of events with varied periods (durations) and amplitudes (intensities). Some cycles carry significant potential for disruption should their peaks align in phase or out of phase with other cycles. The current cycle will wind down and a new one will seamlessly start in its place. Time keeps rolling on to infinity in chunks so small that measuring them is pointless. There is no singularity. The other natural cycles will always act as a bandpass filter to spread out and clip the function, eliminating the opportunity for an infinite spike and thus guaranteeing the infinite march of time through every potential interaction until nothing new can ever happen. Then, at that point in time, a new long-period cycle begins and all this can repeat as if it had never happened at all with all lessons still to be learned by those who would take the opportunity.
- culi 8mo agoBefore you leave a comment about how meaningless this is unless they do XYZ, please realize that there's likely a group chat out there somewhere where all of these concerns have already been raised and considered. The best thing you can do is ask how you as an outsider can help support these organizers
- krautburglar 8mo agoYou have 1) stolen everybody's shit and put it behind a paywall, 2) cornered the hardware market in some RICO-worthy offensive that has priced one of the few affordable pasttimes for young people out of reach, 3) changed your climate story (lie) on a dime, and started putting the horrible power-guzzling data centers on any strip of land within spitting distance of a power plant. I hope you all go out of business, and I hope it happens French Revolution style. Of course they were going to use it for military purposes you spiritual abortions, and there is nothing your keyboard-soft hands can do about it.
- lightyrs 8mo ago» Have there been any mistakes in signature verification for this letter? » We are aware of two mistakes in our efforts to verify the signatures in the form so far. One person who was not an employee of OpenAI or Google found a bug in our verification system and signed falsely under the name "You guys are letting China Win". This was noticed and fixed in under 10 minutes, and the verification system was improved to prevent mistakes like this from happening again. We also had two people submit twice in a way that our automatic de-duplication didn't catch. We do periodic checks for this. Because of anonymity considerations, all signatures are manually reviewed by one fallible human. We do our best to make sure we catch and correct any mistakes, but we are not perfect and will probably make mistakes. We will log those mistakes here as we find them.
- alfiedotwtf 8mo agoIt would be funny in the end if the only ones left to not say no to Trump were Alibaba
- hakrgrl 8mo agoHow cute they bought a domain and everything
- siliconc0w 8mo agoWe need key AI researchers at these companies to speak out - execs will not care otherwise. If Jeff Dean made this a red line, it might matter.
- AdieuToLogic 8mo ago> We need key AI researchers at these companies to speak out ... See this[0] article from Business Insider dated 2026-02-16 titled: The art of the squeal What we can learn from the flood of AI resignation letters And containing: This past week brought several additions to the annals of "Why I quit this incredibly valuable company working on bleeding-edge tech" letters, including from researchers at xAI and an op-ed in The New York Times from a departing OpenAI researcher. Perhaps the most unusual was by Mrinank Sharma, who was put in charge of Anthropic's Safeguards Research Team a year ago, and who announced his departure from what is often considered the more safety-minded of the leading AI startups. 0 - https://www.businessinsider.com/resignation-letters-quit-openai-anthropic-2026-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/resignation-letters-quit-ope...
- ChrisArchitect 8mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175931
- hakrgrl 8mo ago1.5 hours after this was posted, Sam Altman stated openai will work with the DoW. So much for this waste of a domain name. https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 "Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. "
- dang 8mo agoRelated ongoing thread: OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650 - Feb 2026 (22 comments)
- Gigachad 8mo agoSomething doesn’t make sense here. His tweet claims he has exactly the same restrictions that Anthropic had.
- moralestapia 8mo agoMakes 100% sense. They said yes to the same thing.
- karmasimida 8mo agoDario is being ruled out due to ideological standing Makes perfect sense
- nandomrumber 8mo agoYep. Everyone is over thinking it. There would have been a conversation between Hegseth and Trump that went something like: This guy thinks he can tell us what we can and can’t do. Get rid of him. It’s that simple.
- karmasimida 8mo agoHe is a horrible public presenter. He presents himself as someone who is nervous, validation seeking, yet it is stupid of you to not trust him. He lacks confidence yet feels incredibly arrogant. He would succeed in academia as the principal of some prestige university with this exterior, not as CEO of an AI company.
- mortsnort 8mo agoKneecapping the country's best AI lab seems like a bad way to win at the cyber.
- nemo44x 8mo agoCorrect. You will not be divided. You will likely be subtracted.
- dluan 8mo agooops turns out you will all be divided
- rayiner 8mo agoThis seems squarely within the purpose of the Defense Production Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950 "Title I authorizes the President to identify specific goods as 'critical and strategic' and to require private businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for these materials." If you invented a new kind of power source, and the government determined that it could be used to efficiently kill enemies, the government could force you to provide the product to them under the DPA. Why should AI companies get an exemption to that?
- yed 8mo agoWell, for one, they haven’t invoked the Defense Production Act.
- rayiner 8mo agoThe very first point on the website is: “The Department of War is threatening to … Invoke the Defense Production Act.”
- yed 8mo agoA few days ago Hegseth threatened two mutually exclusive things: invoking the Defense Production Act or declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk. Today he went with the latter [https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070 https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070]. That is the main topic now. What they did is basically the exact opposite of invoking the Defense Production Act.
- trinsic2 8mo agoYou mean the Department of Defense? Just because a Authoritarian Regime starts renaming our critical institutions doesn't make it so. Its kind of like calling the "Gulf of Mexico" the "Gulf of America ". Its stupid to step into line with this.
- ipaddr 8mo agoAnd people were wondering how OpenAI will find profitability.
- mrcwinn 8mo agoOpenAI employees lol. You’ve lost utterly and completely. Even if you, as an individual, are a good person.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- _zagj 8mo ago> Signed, The people who: > steal any bit of code you put on the internet regardless of the license you use or its terms, then use it to train their models, then turn around and try to sell it to you > made it so you can't afford new, more powerful computers or smartphones anymore, or perhaps even just replacements for the ones you already have, thanks to massive GPU, DRAM, SSD, and now even HDD shortages > flood the internet with artificial, superficial content > aggressively DDoS your website Real pillars of society.
- techreader2 8mo ago[dead]
- conductr 8mo agoYou can’t be silly enough to build a product that enables things like mass surveillance to proliferate and then try to take a stance of “please don’t use it like that”. You invented a genie and let him out of the bottle.
- apublicfrog 8mo agoThey can actually. Hence why they had it in their AUP.
- politician 8mo agoI simply do not understand why Americans tech companies and their employees will hew and cry about supporting the military. For those of you who support their position, have you ever stopped to consider that your safe, comfortable lives of free speech and protests and TikTok and food and gas and Amazon Next-Day deliveries is enabled by a massive nuclear deterrent operated by the very military you oppose? It is just so disappointing to come here and read these naive takes. Yes, Anthropic should be compelled to support the military using the DPA if necessary.
- dingi 8mo agoIt really shows how far the HN crowd is from reality.
- rectang 8mo ago> “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.” — Colonel Jessup
- politician 8mo agoNo individual, whether a colonel or a CEO, has inherent authority over national security decisions. Authority flows through democratic institutions. A contractor can choose whether to participate, but national defense policy is determined by elected institutions, not private executives. If society believes AI should or should not be used for certain military purposes, the venue for that decision is democratic governance not unilateral corporate refusal or approval. On a CBS interview this morning, Dario defended his position with the claim that he must act because "Congress is slow." CEOs can and should make decisions about what their companies build or refuse to build. What they cannot do is substitute their judgment for the constitutional processes that govern national security. We must not vest de facto policy control in unelected corporate leaders.
- theahura 8mo agoOpenAI is nothing without its people
- Quarrel 8mo agoI know it is a serious topic, but before I clicked on it, I assumed this was going to be about Prime numbers... Maybe it can get reused after this stuff is over.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoWe hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight. [90 minutes later] Ah! Well, nevertheless OK, this is a cheap shot on my part. But still: we hope? What kind of milquetoast martyrdom is this? Nobody gives a shit about tech workers as living, breathing, human moral agents. You (a putative moral actor signed onto this worthy undertaking) might be a person of deep feeling and high principle, and I sincerely admire you for that. But to the world at large, you're an effete button pusher who gets paid mid-six figures to automate society in accordance with billionaires' preferences and your expressions of social piety are about as meaningful as changing the flowers in the window box high up on the side of an ivory tower. The fact that ~80% of the signatories are anonymous only reinforces this perception. If you want this to be more than a futile gesture followed by structural regret while you actively or passively contribute to whatever technologically-accelerated Bad Things come to pass in the near and medium term, a large proportion of you (> 500/648 current signatories) need to follow through and resign over the weekend. Doing so likely won't have that much direct impact, but it will slow things down a little (for the corporate and governmental bad actors who will find deployment of the new tech a little bit harder) and accelerate opposition a little (market price adjustments of elevated risk, increased debate and public rejection of the militaristic use of AI). Hope, like other noble feelings, doesn't change anything. Actions, however poorly coordinated and incoherent, change things a little. If your principles are to have meaning, act on them during the short window of attention you have available.
- csneeky 8mo agoClaude is better for much than GPT atm. You really think the government is going to hamstring the engineering of weapons and intelligence capabilities by not using it?
- tomcam 8mo agoPlease take this question at face value. I tend to be slightly pro defense department in this context, but it is not a strongly held belief. What I have known is that since its very inception, Google has been doing massive amounts of business with the war department. What makes this particular contract different? I really am trying to understand why these sentiments now.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoIt's a clear enough moral issue that whichever side of it you end up on is likely to have life-shaping consequences 5 or 10 years down the line. It's predictable that there will be domestic or international conflict with a high cost in lives and political coherence over that timescale, and being someone who 'was in AI' at a government scale vendor is qualitatively different from being a database admin o font designer or UX specialist. Substantively, individual employees of these firms may have little or no actual impact on this. But AI is ubiquitous enough and disruptive enough that being professionally connected with it at a time of great geopolitical instability has the potential to be a very very bad look later.
- tomcam 8mo agoBut hasn’t that always been true at Google? They’ve been military contractors for decades.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoNo, because 'military contractor' is vague and people don't associate logistics or mapping info with death directly and assign responsibility to some generic person in uniform. 'AI systems that hunt down and kill you' is the sort of sci-fi nightmare people relate to personally.
- nilespotter 8mo agoThese models are weapons whether the frontier provider founders and their trite and lofty mission statements like it or not. Private individuals and private companies do not get to create a defensive weapon with unprecedented power in a new category in the US and not share it with the US military. You guys are batshit insane.
- senderista 8mo ago"We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together"
- lazzlazzlazz 8mo agoThe signatories of this site are leaping at a misguided opportunity for moral credit, when the reality is that they're getting whipped into a left-leaning frenzy. As Undersecretary Jeremy Lewin clarified today[1], these weighty decisions should not be made by activists inside companies, but made by laws and legitimate government. [1]: https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
- 5o1ecist 8mo ago[flagged]
- rdtsc 8mo agoThat's always been the loophole. But it involved an extra step so they are just trying to get rid of that one annoyance. Here is an interesting thing to think about which country spies on Americans the most and how? Are there New Zealand commandos sneaking around the shores tapping cables? Moles working in the AT&T for the Canadian government? What happens if one of those individuals get caught, are they quietly allowed to leave, and if they commit any crimes do the charges get erased magically? Otherwise, if that doesn't happen there is danger they'll grab our spies in their countries in turn. Or they just blatantly pass lists around of who works for whom so they don't interfere with each other as that would preclude getting the data back through the loop to the NSA. There is of course another loophole and that is private entities collecting data. The Constitution doesn't say anything about that, so the government figures it's fare game if they just pay a company to collect the data and then they query later. They didn't collect it so it's not "spying".
- segmondy 8mo agoNot just that, but with how unfriendly we have been to the world, there's no guarantee that they will keep sharing as they have in the past.
- permo-w 8mo agoThis is one thing I cannot fault Trump on. He's really succeeded in reducing European reliance on, subservience to, and respect for the USA. Now if we can stand on our own and not just swing further towards China instead, he'll have produced an absolute miracle
- pasquinelli 8mo ago> He's really succeeded in reducing European reliance on, subservience to, and respect for the USA. is that so?
- verisimi 8mo agoIt's great that people are taking a moral position re their work, and are seemingly prepared to take a bit of a risk in expressing themselves. However, if we're honest, Google has a long history of selling 'the people' out on domestic surveillance. There is even a good argument that this is what it was created for in the first place, given it was seeded with money from inqtel, the CIA venture capital fund. So, while I commend acting with your conscience in this (rather minor) case, and I'm glad to see people attempt to draw a line somewhere, what will this really come to? I strongly suspect this is event itself is just theater for the masses, where corporates and their employees get to stand up to government (yay!). The reality is probably all that is being complained about, and far worse, has been going on for years. How far would these signatories go? Would they be prepared to walk away from all that money? Will they stop the rest of the dystopian coding/legislation writing, or is that stuff still ok (not that evil)? Ultimately, is gaining the money worth the loss of one's soul? If you know better, and know that it is wrong to assist corporations and governments in cleaving people open for profit and control, but do it anyway for the house, private schools, holidays, Ferrari, only taking a stand in these performative, semi-sanctioned events - is this really the standard you accept for yourself? If so, then no problem. If not, what exactly are you doing the rest of the time? Are you able to switch your morality/heart/soul off? Judge yourself. If you find you are not acting in accord with yourself, everything is already lost.
- chkaloon 8mo agoToo late
- hedayet 8mo agoJust one thing - unless you're at a principal level or higher, don't quit as long as your conscience can take it. You'll be replaced by 10 other people overnight.
- largbae 8mo agoThe signatories of this (letter, petition, whatever) are the same folks who profit from creating this Pandora's Box. If you don't want it opened, stop making it?
- w4yai 8mo agoThere are other valid use cases than war for AI.
- largbae 8mo agoOf course there are. But once it exists, a technology will be used for all purposes. The choice is in the making, anything else is virtue signaling.
- etchalon 8mo agoOne second, I have to go turn my stove off. It could be used to start a forest fire.
- largbae 8mo agoThat is not analogous to this petition.
- conductr 8mo agoNot all products will get abused, there’s better tools already (like matches/lighters/etc) or there’s just no good abusive use cases. Some products are just begging to be abused. You can’t really tit for tat with a household appliance here, these straw men aren’t of the same planet.
- pokstad 8mo agoThen start your own company where you control the direction of the products. All these people make millions and only speak up after they are set for life.
- tgv 8mo ago
- latencyhawk 8mo agoWell, I think I will get the 200 sub.
- ReptileMan 8mo agoIt is really nice to see employees creating lists for the next round of laoffs themselves.
- angusik 8mo agoI'm here to support Pentagon (:
- zahlman 8mo agoIs there a particular reason why the actual letter content requires JavaScript to load while everything else is readable?
- HWNDUS7 8mo agoSweet. Looking forward to another CTF season of He Will Not Divide Us. I love performative acts of wealthy Silicon Valley drags.
- sourcegrift 8mo agoCute, I will also sign this since there are only upsides of Good optics and no downsides Let me know when any of them resigns after the companies do inevitably take the million dollar contracts.
- nobodywillobsrv 8mo agoIt really feels like I am no longer impressed with Anthropic safety. Do they have even a basic understanding of the different regimes of safety and what allegiance means to ones own state? It would be fine to say they are opting out of all forms of protection against adversaries. But it feels like just more insane naive tech bro stuff. As someone outside the tech bro bubble in fintech in London, can somebody explain this in a way that doesn't indicate these are sort of kids in a playground who think there is no such thing as the wolf? Again, opting out and specializing in tech that you are going to provide to your enemies AND friends alike is fine. That is a good specialization. But this is not what I hear. I hear protest songs not deep thinking of thousand year mind set.
- know-how 8mo ago[dead]
- paradoxyl 8mo ago[flagged]
- HardCodedBias 8mo agoSo much insanity. Anthropic wanted a veto on use of force by USG. That is intolerable, no private party can have a veto over the sovereign. It is that simple. Anthropic should have just walked away (and taken the settlement lumps) when they realized that the USG knew. But no, they started some crazy campaign. This is so irrational on Anthropic. Purchasing managers across the US (and the world) have to understand now that while Anthropic has the best model on the planet, it is not rational (if you prefer it is not rational in ways commonly understood). It is a risk and must be treated as such.
- motbus3 8mo agoThe important thing to know is that no one wants a conflict. Don't be used for that. Don't accept that. We protect our families when we are home. That's all everybody wants.
- fschuett 8mo agoTed Kaczynski was right about technology
- imiric 8mo agoThe levels of irony in this case are staggering. The employees of these companies are complicit in creating the greatest data harvesting and manipulation machine ever built, whose use cases have yet to be fully realized, yet when the government wants to use it for what governments do best—which was reasonable to expect given the corporate-government symbiosis we've been living in for decades—then it's a step too far? Give me a fucking break. Stop the performative outrage, and go enjoy the fruits of your labor like the rest of the elites you're destroying the world with.
- celltalk 8mo agoWouldn’t it be ironic if US used open source Chinese models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight… democracy at its best.
- tgv 8mo agoSo now they suddenly develop a conscience? Killing education, and by implication actively dumbing the future world, putting large parts of the labor market at risk, porn fakes, and destroying artistic creation, are acceptable in the name of profit, apparently.
- GaryBluto 8mo agoIf the DoW/DoD wants Anthropic, they'll get Anthropic, whether we know about it publicly or not. It's not unlikely that they're already working together and just putting on a show for the public. I'd even go as far to say that if this is indeed a publicity campaign it is the most successful one I've seen in years. Many detractors of the existence of LLMs are suddenly leaping to Anthropic's defence.
- josfredo 8mo agoThis is the only careful comment. Everything else here is trying to mentally push away the inevitable. You can argue if it is noble to perform resistance in the face of what is pretty much fate, but I would not put any cent on that.
- grey-area 8mo agoThis has much broader implications for the US economy and rule of law in the US. If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon? This marks an important turning point for the US.
- busko 8mo agoYep, where does your trust lay now? It's been a minute of pretending it'll be okay.
- adventured 8mo agoNothing has changed in decades regarding this. People just like to pretend something new is happening, because they're extremely desperate to proclaim a fundamental turning / ending of the US (which is why every single event brings out those claims: this time is different! America will never recover from this! etc). US tech companies were previously forced into compliance with PRISM or threatened with destruction (see: escalating fines to infinity against Yahoo, forcing their eventual compliance). You know what's new? This administration is doing out in the open what used to go on quietly.
- lostlogin 8mo ago> Nothing has changed > You know what's new? This administration is doing out in the open what used to go on quietly. So this administration has got bold and the behaviour has become overt.
- matheusmoreira 8mo agoThe US has already ended. It was destroyed in 9/11/2001. America is a shadow of its former self.
- queenkjuul 8mo agoBin laden really did win
- foota 8mo agoWell that aged poorly.
- jurschreuder 8mo agoThey always already wanted it to be Grok, Grok is the only, what they call "not woke AI".
- wood_spirit 8mo agoThe talk about declaring anthropic a supply chain security risk (which doesn’t just remove it from DoW but also all the contractors and suppliers that supply DoW) was also accompanied by a completely different threat: to declare it national security need to take over then company. Prediction: in time, OpenAI will be declared such to privatise profits but socialise losses
- beng-nl 8mo agoInteresting. George hotz has said his motivation to start tinygrad was the worry that nvidia would be nationalized.
- KellyCriterion 8mo agothis would pulverize the stock value then, right? or would the government just buy the stocks on the market?
- goku12 8mo agoThere is just one rule. If they mention it, they'll do it.
- datsci_est_2015 8mo agoHorseshoe theory applied to nationalization of companies. It would be cathartic if it weren’t so grim.
- _cenw 8mo agoThis is the line? Really? Not all the other shit this administration has been doing? God, I hate it here.
- paganel 8mo agoJeff Dean could have done a lot of good and add his name to the list of signatories, seeing as how leaf of AI at Google or some such. He was supposed to be this super-smart dude, I guess he’s far from that. Huge props for the the Google and OpenAI engineers that did sign this, for those that did realize that they’re fighting for a greater thing, not just for an extra zero or two added at the end of their bank accounts. Especially as they’re taking a great amount of risk by doing it, first of all, imo they are risking their current employment status.
- krystofee 8mo agoHow come this is signed by OpenAI engineers while OpenAI participates in it with DoW? https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
- goku12 8mo ago> permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight. This sounds way worse than dystopian, Orwellian or big-brotherly, in a world where you can't even get a human to review the 'autonomously placed lock' on your email or social media account. The Terminator saga is perhaps a good fit. But I have a feeling that they won't stop even at that.
- alsufinow 8mo agoW
- ineedaj0b 8mo agoreally dumb. you don’t win this
- siva7 8mo agoAt least they're making it easy for HR.
- Jaxon_Varr 8mo ago[dead]
- mellosouls 8mo ago"Domestic". Very disappointing the letter signatories have chosen to reinforce the US-centric idea that using the models to spy on other democracies is fine and dandy. Altman and senior others names notable by their absence; not unexpected given the quickly following apparent submission to DoW, which leaves the signatories here (while well-intentioned) in exposed ethical positions now.
- bambax 8mo ago> We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands... WTF does that even mean, we "hope"???!? You know they won't, what's the point of hoping? Why not quit if you have the courage, or not quit -- and shut up?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- gunnihinn 8mo agoThe bravery of the people signing this anonymously is inspiring.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoWhat's uninspiring is your ignorance of game theory. Anyone who puts their name on that list might potentially be a target. On the flip side, there is no signaling value in putting your name on the list anonymously. Therefore anonymous names on the list believe in it (tho some people might make the calculation that they can't handle being a target but they might still resist and obstruct in other ways.) So: It's inspiring that a lot of people are ready to obstruct or delay even if they're not ready to deal with personal consequences.
- gradstudent 8mo ago> Anyone who puts their name on that list might potentially be a target. My first inclination is to read letters like this as a threat from employees to the employer. It says hey boss-men, this shite is not on. Signing anonymously undermines that message. I tend to read those signatures as as, I don't like this but it's not worth my job. I have no faith in the efficacy or even existence of "obstruct or delay" tactics from folks like that.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo ago> It says hey boss-men, this shite is not on. Signing anonymously undermines that message. No it doesn't. It says "Hey boos I'm telling you this shit is not cool, and there's nothing you can do to me personally because you don't know who I am." Let me put it differently. Suppose YOU are the boss. You company has 1000 employees and you receive a letter with 500 anonymous signatures saying "we fucking hate what you're doing" (so, 50% of your employees, 100% anonymous). Do you get a little bit worried? Or do you get not worried at all because everybody signed anonymous? Actual question, let me know how you think.
- gradstudent 8mo ago
- hrtk 8mo agoMore like “you have been divided” — OpenAI
- khannn 8mo agoShades of "He Will Not Divide Us"
- amelius 8mo agoHegseth is discovering the shittiness of the SaaS model.
- Samarrrtthh 8mo agowhy
- jspdown 8mo agoDomestic mass surveillance might feel tolerable when you live in the country conducting it. But how would you feel about other countries adopting similar policies, and thereby mass-surveilling the American people? Because that's exactly what these policies authorize when applied to the rest of the world.
- amunozo 8mo agoAmericans always think they're exceptional so they have the divine right to do things that the rest cannot.
- Dansvidania 8mo agoMaybe that’s why they like Israel so much.
- ozgung 8mo agoThe bad news for American people is that "others" are pretty good at these technologies. When I read an important AI paper chances are all the names on it are non-American, even for papers from American labs. In a real war, this becomes problematic. Every nation has some bias but I think Americans have power poisoning for being the dominant power for so long. They think they are entitled to do anything and believe they are the good guys in the history. Well...
- mlrtime 8mo agoWhen you look at the world as a action movie with good/bad guys, then you're going to have a pretty bad time. There are only good/bad people for moments in time. Some are good for longer than others. But I get it, anti-American sentiment is very popular right now.
- kakacik 8mo agoHow else do you suggest common folks are supposed to view world, or well anything? Americans do the same, hence whole world got ttump. 95% of the world aint US, so such logic is even easier for almost whole mankind - is US force of good or evil? Different places would give you different answers, and most americans would not like the actual spread these days.
- ozgung 8mo agoAm I the only one who is really freaking out? They deploy BOTS to KILL PEOPLE! This is the only big news here. This is the only time in this timeline where we must say "you shall not pass". The ultimate red line. And there is no going back. It's just escalation in an arms race from now on. Nothing good can come out of this. And you are talking about details, if some guys mentioned the word "domestic" in their tweet etc. BOTS will autonomously KILL PEOPLE!
- sensanaty 8mo agoI'm going to copy a comment I made in a related thread: I might be being a bit conspiratorial, but is anyone else not buying this whole song and dance, from either side? Anthropic keeps talking about their safeguards or whatever, but seeing their marketing tactics historically it just reads more like trying to posture and get good PR for "fighting the system" or whatever. "Our AI is so advanced and dangerous Trump has to beg us to remove our safeguards, and we valiantly said no! Oh but we were already spying on people and letting them use our AIs in weapons as long as a human was there to tick a checkbox. Also, once our models improve enough then we'll be sending in The Borg to autonomously target our Enemies™" I just don't buy anything spewing out of the mouths of these sociopathic billionaires, and I trust the current ponzi schemers in the US gov't even less. Especially given how much astroturfing Anthropic loves doing, and the countless comments in this thread saying things like "Way to go Amodei, I'm subbing to your 200 dollar a month plan now forever!!11". One thing I know for sure is that these AI degenerates have made me a lot more paranoid of anything I read online.
- vander_elst 8mo agoWhat's crazy here is that a government I'd requiring de-regulation while companies are trying to keep stricter rules. What a time.
- fragkakis 8mo agoI clearly see the point against using AI for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. But for the latter, I don't see a choice. If other countries are willing to allow fully autonomous weapons using their own AI, it's no longer a matter of choice, you have to do it too.
- zarzavat 8mo agoThe same could be said of mass producing chemical and biological weapons.
- fragkakis 8mo agoFor what it is worth, those have been banned universally AFAIK
- trinsic2 8mo ago> it's no longer a matter of choice, you have to do it too You know, there are plenty of examples where people in positions of power choose different paths of escalation. I doesn't always need to be liner tit for tat. Some times you need to step back and look at the larger picture and decide of the escalation is worth the risk for all of humanity. There is a video about game theory [0] that describes this problem very clearly. You have better outcomes when you make decisions outside the direct course of escalation. Please don't talk in absolutes about these things, you have an opinion. I accept that, but its not as black and white as you think [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
- singlewind 8mo agoThe beauty of balance is someone can say yes and someone can say no. No matter how good do you calculate there is theory behind.
- poisonborz 8mo agoSo these are the employees that ignore the hundreds of other atrocities their companies do against other countries, small firms, individuals, come out flags waving for some cherry-picked issues, and next day go back to their well paid jobs, vested stocks and office perks and lunch chefs to passively support these agendas further, even if they have the best career mobility across almost all industries. I mean it's neat, but naive at best.
- shevy-java 8mo ago"We are the employees of Google and OpenAI, two of the top AI companies in the world." Well, good luck to them, but the state can control from top-down via laws, so they WILL eventually abuse people and violate their rights by proxy-force. I would not trust any of them with my data.
- uwagar 8mo agoisnt the pentagon just asking for total access to source code and data silos of anthropic and openai...that we cant ask because its proprietary software?
- pluc 8mo agoHey did someone show this to Sam? I don't think he knows.
- XCSme 8mo agoThis reminds me a bit of the Black Mirror episodes with the bees. Where the people whose names tweeted something were actually the targets... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation
- kittikitti 8mo agoI respect this and everyone who signed it. Not that I was ever employed by them, I also wouldn't be confident enough to do this, and I wish it were any other way. This is inspiring, thank you.
- succo 8mo agoThis is game theory 100%, who's gonna be the bad guy?
- pluc 8mo agoThey have now deleted/hid all signatures because their corpodaddy went the other way. This is so great.
- xphos 8mo agoThis should be flagged political like literally everything else that has been flagged ironic how when your on the menu you dont follow the same protocols applied everyone else too. I only say this because this is not new behavior for the administration its been reported here on HN and in less biased and political ways but ends up suppressed just confused what changed? Edit just to be clear this shouldn't be flagged and posts they deal with rights in the past shouldn't have been flagged because rights should be the preeminent concern of anyone in tech
- Dansvidania 8mo agoI think the time when engineers could steer the heading of the companies they work for is long gone, sadly. It’s too little too late. Don’t be evil is not a value anyone is even pretending to uphold. I’d rather someone of these very smart people start to develop countermeasures.
- surume 8mo agoYou must follow the law in your home country. Your refusal to do so constitutes Treason. Obey the law.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8mo agoThe counterargument by the other side will always be, if we don't do it it doesn't matter because the Chinese will do it anyway - and then, common people will be at a disadvantage.
- twocommits 8mo ago[dead]
- drcongo 8mo agoIf I was Anthropic, I'd be saving this as a list of potential hires who share the company's values and shortlisting some to call up on Monday morning.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoFor all the authoritarian regime talk. Here we have a list of many non-citizens willing to argue with the secretary of war of a country they are a temporary resident of, with no concern of repercussion.
- chairhairair 8mo ago“no concern of repercussion” Your worldview is outdated. There are obviously risks to signing this. Get your head out of the sand.
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoI guess some people were only willing to lend their job title.
- nailer 8mo agoFrom the HN Guidelines: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
- rybosworld 8mo agoI don't love talking politics on this site. Hackernews has done a pretty decent job of staying non-political and I think that's been a positive thing. AI is re-shaping American society in a lot of ways. And this is happening at a time where the U.S. is more politically divided than it's ever been. People who use LLMs regularly (most SWEs at this point) can understand the danger signs. The bad outcomes are not inevitable. But the conversations around this cannot only be held in internet forums and blogposts. Hackernews is an echo chamber of early adopters of tech. The discussions had here don't percolate to the general population. I believe many of us have a duty to make this feel real to the less technical people in our lives. Too many folks have an information filter that is one of Fox News/CNN/MSNBC. Fox is the worst on misinformation. The others are also bad. Their viewers will not hear, in any clear way, how the Trump admin is trying to bully AI companies into doing what it wants. This will be a headline or an article. A footnote not given the attention it deserves. Plainly: there is an attempt to turn AI into a political weapon aimed at the general population. Misinformation and surveillance are already out of control. If you can, imagine that getting worse. This feels like one of those hinge moments. If you can, have real-life conversations with people around you. Explain what's at stake and why it matters now, not later.
- andytratt 8mo agoHN should apply their flagging of posts consistently. either flag the politics or not at all.
- Thorrez 8mo ago>If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Would this "open letter" be covered on TV news?
- krapp 8mo agoThe concept of "tv news" itself is pretty anachronistic, and the premise that nothing that would be covered on "tv news" should be of any interest to "good hackers" is a bit elitist. That guideline, like the rest of this forum, was written in the early 2000s, for what one could argue was an entirely different world than now, with an entirely different relationship between culture and media, and the assumptions it makes about culture and media may no longer apply, if they ever did. That said, here are some American examples - it is being covered by CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-full-transcript/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-full... And a local affiliate: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/nation-world/trump-order-anthropic-tech-after-pentagon-dispute/507-9d980021-b0a3-4751-9371-c731c86f6b6e https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/nation-world/trump-order-a... And ABC: https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/anthropic-refuses-bend-pentagon-ai-safeguards-dispute-nears-130557118 https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/anthropic-refuses-bend-pent... And a local affiliate: https://abc7news.com/post/anthropic-refuses-bend-pentagon-ai-safeguards-dispute-nears-deadline/18657113/ https://abc7news.com/post/anthropic-refuses-bend-pentagon-ai... NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-bans-anthropic-government-use-rcna261055 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-bans-anthropic-... Fox: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tech-company-refuses-pentagon-demands-unrestricted-use-its-ai https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tech-company-refuses-pentag... Searching "anthropic letter tv news coverage" in Google, the News tab has tons of other mainstream news sources, worldwide, covering this story. So yes. This and many "technical" stories that appear on HN would be covered by "tv news."
- kapluni 8mo agoSadly didn’t age well - OpenAI enthusiastically caved
- trickstra 8mo agoIt's fun seeing both of these posts on the main page of hackernews at the same time.
- herdcall 8mo agoYeah, I guess OpenAI is so upset with the Department of War that they signed a deal with it! Hypocrisy all around. https://x.com/grok/status/2027769947913425390?s=20 https://x.com/grok/status/2027769947913425390?s=20
- kelvinjps10 8mo ago>AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. So they're saying anthropic is lying or what? Because Sam Altman is saying that DOW agrees with no mass surveillance and no autonomous drone killing. Also if not, how safety is their priority?
- tuetuopay 8mo agoSam Altman is lying by omission. It’s been confirmed [1] that OpenAI agreed to "lawful" use of the models. Since it’s the DoW, they can make pretty much anything lawful by invoking "national security". [1]: https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
- davidmurdoch 8mo agoWhat is this supposed to do? OpenAI is already cozied up and in bed with Dept of War, they're already busy making lots of little surveillance babies.
- marcd35 8mo agoabout as much as all the people who signed the petition to stop/slow the rate of ai advancement - nothing other than pointing to it in the future when all has gone to shit and say, "told you so"
- gurumeditations 8mo agoThe “Department of War” DOES NOT EXIST.
- pavel_lishin 8mo ago> We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight. Hope is neat, but are the signatories willing to quit their jobs over this? Kind of a hollow threat if not.
- iso1631 8mo agoMaybe their union will call a strike
- robwwilliams 8mo agoQuitting their jobs? How is that the pragmatic or effective response?
- dr_kretyn 8mo agoQuitting no. Quite quitting or internal turmoil could be beneficial. Of course, in case these people meaningfully contributed in the first place otherwise it's a good pretext to fire for cause without any severance.
- pavel_lishin 8mo agoHow would it be pragmatic to say, "oh well!" and continue working there?
- drewda 8mo agoThey put their names to their position publicly. That is meaningful action.
- nailer 8mo agoAll that will happen as a result of US companies not willing to work on weapons is that the US will be made more vulnerable to adversaries, particularly the CCP who don’t care about these things.
- monkaiju 8mo agoI'm regularly surprised how otherwise intelligent people with "good intentions" keep going to work at these places in the first place, then get all "surprised pikachu" when it turns out their work might go towards nefarious ends. These technologies are inherently anti-creativity and researchers have been sounding the alarms about their efficacy for mass surveillance for a long time. Even this petition only seems concerned with "domestic mass surveillance", as if the tools used by an empire abroad dont inevitably get turned inwards. At some point its hard not to think they just cant avoid the money. At least for the SWEs these are folks who could work at much less "evil" businesses and still easily clear $150k or $200k but they just cant help themselves. This is a company that steals its training data and whose primary product is at best an anti working-class cudgel that management can use to intimidate workers and threaten them with replacement and at worse is a mass-surveillance/killing tool.
- redbell 8mo ago> They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. Prisoner's Dilemma in Action!
- torton 8mo agoApparently, OpenAI already folded. https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/tech/openai-pentagon-deal-ai-systems https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/tech/openai-pentagon-deal-ai-... A unified front from tech companies could have stood a chance, but there's too much money to be made and the imbalance of power is too great without departing the area of influence of the US government entirely (and then go where? China, UK, Australia, etc. are equally not shy of coercing commercial capabilities in pursuit of government goals, including military goals).
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- djgrant 8mo agoThe regulatory environment in the US is insane
- tonymet 8mo agoAllowing anonymous signatories only weakens the petition. Two important people signing a petition is worth more than 10000 anons. I scrolled through a few pages and 40-60% are anonymous. Even a handful weakens the petition. I wish more people would participate in civics . Attend your city council or local political party meeting. See what it takes to actually collect signatures, run a campaign. Online slactivism actually just worsens the cause, because potential energy is vented on futile online “petitions” rather than taking real action.
- bufio 8mo agoHacker news?
- guywithahat 8mo ago> Label the company a "supply chain risk" Are they not a huge supply chain risk? Anthropic, being second chicken to OpenAI for a long time, decided to integrate tightly with the DoW. Now that their consumer products are doing better they're making decisions for the DoW as a supplier. This isn't about whether I agree with the DoW or not, it's just that behavior obviously would never fly with any customer. The only real surprise is I haven't heard of the DoW considering Grok, which is not only a frontier model but has an existing gov cloud platform.
- threethirtytwo 8mo agoIt's like watching Darth Vader Senior fight Darth Vader Junior and luke skywalker is nowhere in sight.
- muyuu 8mo agolooking at the news right now... i don't know about that
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- pciexpgpu 8mo agoThe common people have viewed tech elites being out of touch. Tech elites have some sort of moral higher ground they like to espouse but rarely have the goods to show. You are working on ads, slurping up data and trapping people into rage baits and dramas with an economy centered around marketing and influencer types. I don't think these tech elites should decide arbitrarily by signing some fake elitist pledge. The USA has a democratic way of resolving these things. It should not be in the hands of a few. The executive branch is a side effect of elections and should hold the line against these tech elites. I don't agree with the essence of these nonsense pledges either: they are actively undermining the US while living and breathing here thanks to the most advanced military and defense systems on earth. Why are these tech elites not including things like "we won't slurp up ad data" or "we will not work on dark patterns" because it's easy to come up with BS pledges and seem like 'we are so holier than thou'. It is a bit infuriating because this resulted in the mess we are in. The income disparity between the tech elites (the entire tech industry) and the rest of the country is so huge that I don't think empty posturing and pledges and moral superiority matters. I do not want to be associated with these elitist people who as a group are extremely educated, talented, impactful - but in one very very tiny piece in the grand scheme of things. Doesn't automatically make you the controller of the entire world's decisions.
- chazftw 8mo agoTech does tech, government governs. Pretty easy. Get to work, do your job.
- burnerRhodov2 8mo agoI don't understand why anthropic would take a $200m contract, when the scope of government use may conflict with the company’s stated safety boundaries. Like, duh? Then you are going to be all high and mighty about your morals, but why did you take the $200m in the first place?
- queenkjuul 8mo agoOpenAI made a major contribution to Trump's PAC and they got roughly the deal anthropic wanted, no? None of any of this is about national security, and I'm 100% convinced these companies don't actually have any qualms about surveillance. It's PR on the business side and typical Trump tribute-demanding on the other.