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It's a mistake. If it was done by an auto-correct mechanism, would we still say "maybe don't sell your word processor to the army if you can't vouch for its aut
by yoavm 2mo ago
It's a mistake. If it was done by an auto-correct mechanism, would we still say "maybe don't sell your word processor to the army if you can't vouch for its auto-correct system!!!"? Besides, "taking notes" can literally be listing targets, and "getting from A to B" can be the road to killing them.
- 7373737373 2mo agoHow intelligent and autonomous does a murderbot have to become before you stop absolving its creator and seller from any responsibility?
- yoavm 2mo agoLLM are not murderbots simply because its a very niche use case. They provide some kind of general intelligence, that many of us use daily to vibe code HTML. If the fact that LLMs are also sometimes used to automate killing then humans should be considered murderbots as well, since few of us engage in the activity of killing (and are autonomous & intelligent). Send the blame to our "creator" then?
- 7373737373 2mo agoYou didn't answer my question
- yoavm 2mo agoSorry of it wasn't clear. I put the blame on the creator/seller of any murderbot, regardless of its autonomous or intelligence levels. I disagree that what were talking about, Claude, is a murderbot or anything close to it.
- q8zd3 2mo agoLLM providers get a free pass for anything these days, unfortunately
- digdugdirk 2mo agoIf the US military purchased camera guided smart munitions with a miscalibrated camera, such that it ignored adult targets and instead specifically targeted children, would that also be a simple mistake per your argument?
- yoavm 2mo agoIf one camera out of thousands has this issue, then yes it's a mistake. If the army doesn't notice it isn't working well after shooting the first child, I'd be learning more towards blaming the army.
- tsimionescu 2mo agoAgain, a product that facilitates the taking of notes, even notes that entail the killing of human beings, is fundamentally different from a product that exists to suggest which human beings to kill (or at least which places to destroy, regardless of whether human beings happen to be there or not). If MS Word had some kind of systematic bias that made it likely to corrupt the notes taken in it such that they tend to be more bloody battle plans, then that would indeed lead to some responsibility on the MS engineer's part for any mistakes that result from this bug. Similarly for Ford engineers if their vehicles had some bug that made them more likely to lead soldiers riding in them to the wrong destination. If your system is designed to help choose targets, and it chooses the wrong target, especially with such tragic consequences, then your system is likely not fit for purpose and you should be held responsible for selling it to the army. And that is assuming it didn't actually have some bias + misalignment problem where it intentionally tried to kill children, and selected this school specifically because it gave some plausible deniability. For all we know, it's even possible that some bias like this was known about inside Amthropic and hidden from the public - unless an external investigation is made, that can't be ruled out.