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Comment by throw0101a

4 days ago

> Without reading every word of every embedded tweet, a part missing from the conversation is HOW they are strongarming.

There are two possibilities:

> The government would likely argue that dropping the contractual restrictions doesn't change the product. Claude is the same model with the same weights and the same capabilities—the government just wants different contractual terms. […] Anthropic would likely argue the opposite: that its usage restrictions are part of what Claude is as a commercial service, and that Claude-without-guardrails is a product it doesn't offer to anyone. On this view, the government is asking for a new product, and the statute doesn't clearly authorize that.

and

> The more extreme possibility would be the government compelling Anthropic to retrain Claude—to strip the safety guardrails baked into the model's training, not merely modify the access terms. Here the characterization question seems easier: a retrained model looks much more like a new product than dropping contractual restrictions does. Admittedly, the government has a textual argument in its favor: the DPA's definitions of "services" include “development … of a critical critical technology item,” and the government could frame retraining Claude as exactly that. Whether courts would accept that framing, especially in light of the major questions doctrine, is another matter.

* https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-defense-produc...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950

A more extreme situation: could the DPA be used to nationalize the model so the government has ownership, and then allow access to more amenable AI players?

There's a third possibility. Anthropic's management desires cover to remove limiters on some of its products for some of its customers. The Pentagon is more than happy to play the bad guy if it means that they get something that's even more useful to them than what they would have gotten otherwise.

"We made these compromises because national defense is really super important." has historically proven to be a really effective explanation for tech companies that want to abandon some of their previously-stated "nice and friendly" values in exchange for money.

  • When I imagine a world with this scenario being the truth, I am less confused than when I imagine a world with the alternatives. I find this to be a fantastic and historically reliable (for me) heuristic.

    That being said, I imagine it also factors into internal dialogue that allows those higher up to explain to the boots-on-the-ground researchers that "no you're not working for the military industrial complex, they're just stealing your work that was intended to feed the orphans!"

    • While Rationalist techniques can be useful (and their stated objective of "Your brain is bad at thinking carefully. Learn how to make it do better." is a very good one), I'm always cautious when deploying their techniques. The Rats were prone to ascending very, very far up their own assholes... so much so that a huge chunk of the US-based folks got pretty thoroughly captured by lightly disguised 1960's-era Hippie woo and mysticism.

      One would think that "Make sure to frequently evaluate whether or not the techniques you're using are actually effective, and adjust your actions if they're not." would be something that member of that group would do automatically as a matter of habit. But, it turns out that many folks shut off their brains when they get to wrap things in jargon as extraneous as it is impenetrable and slap ass-pulled percentages and betting receipts on to the exterior.

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