Comment by moozooh

> Palantr will also be subject to the same contractual limitations as the DoD.

Well, first of all, we don't actually know that. Second, I'm going to question the commitment of any company to the principles of democracy and AI safety if one of their bigger partnership is with a literal mass surveillance, Minority-Report-crap company. It's the most confusing business partner to see when you're positioning your company as THE ethical one. If you're dealing with Palantir, you're helping mass surveillance, full stop, because that's what this company does. Which country's citizens get the short end of it is completely irrelevant (though in all likelihood it's still Americans because that's Palantir's home turf).

> Pragmatically, Amodei is an American citizen heading an American company in America; why give the current regime additional reasons to persecute them and risk seizing control of the technology for their friends?

If that's how we characterize the current regime (which I actually agree with), then how come he's proactively trying to help it, deal with it, and insist it's a democracy that needs to be "empowered"? Sounds backwards to me. When you're about to be persecuted by your own government for not allowing it to use your models to do some heinous shit, this sounds like exactly the kind of government you shouldn't be helping at all (and ideally not do business where it can reach you). This is not normal.

> What is the realistic alternative? [...] Try and pause/stop unilaterally while money floods into their arguably less scrupulous competitors?

If you notice that you're doing harm and you're concerned about doing harm, stop doing harm! Don't make it worse! "If I hadn't pulled the trigger, somebody else would" is a phrase you wouldn't expect to hold up in court. Similarly, racing to the bottom to be the most compassionate, self-conscious, and financially successful scumbag is the least convincing motivation imaginable. We will kill you quickly and painlessly unlike those other, less scrupulous guys! Logic like this absolves bad actors from any responsibility. The amount of harm stays the same but some of it gets whitewashed and virtue-signalled, and at the very minimum I'd expect the onlookers like ourselves not to engage in that.

> Nobody knows if Anthropic's efforts will make much difference, but at least it is refreshing to see a technology company and its leader try to stand up for some principles.

These aren't principles. What he's doing here is a free opportunity for incredible PR and industry support that he's successfully taken advantage of. The actual policy backslides, caveats, and all the lines that had been crossed prior will not receive as much press as the heroic grandstanding of a humble Valley nerd against Pentagon warmongers. Nobody will actually take the time to read the statement and realize how the entire text is full of lawyer-approved non-committal phrasing that leaves outs for any number of future revisions without technically contradicting it. I've already pointed some of it out earlier in the thread. The technology for autonomous weapons isn't reliable enough for use, gee, thanks! I feel so much safer now knowing that Dario will have no qualms engaging with it as soon as he deems it reliable enough.