Comment by tcdent
6 hours ago
As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question, and have spent centuries refining their practices. Deferring that to a private company is actually a major regression and a concerning role to pass on to the public regardless.
FWIW I am not pro military, but it's a prominent part of human culture and not going away anytime soon. I do understand the nature of professions, however, and only one of these groups has made the interpretation of this question their specialization.
Militaries have a lot of experience, and an exceptionally poor track record.
I don’t remember the last war that didn’t have credible evidence of war crimes occurring. Were bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran, Iraq had Abu Ghraib among all the Collateral Damage stuff, the Highway of Death in the Gulf was probably a war crime, Vietnam had My Lai, WWII was the advent of carpet bombing civilian infrastructure. I can’t think of any for Korea, but I also know very little so that doesn’t say much.
We still haven’t charged anyone for the second strike on that fishing boat in South America, and I haven’t heard a single rationale for why that’s not a war crime other than “fog of war”.
The US doesn’t even really have a meaningful system for finding and prosecuting these, because we aren’t signatories for the ICC and have a bill saying we’ll invade if they charge one of our service members with a war crime. We aren’t basically the furthest thing from having any experience prosecuting war crimes. I can probably count on my fingers the number of cases we’ve tried. We rarely charge our own service members, and we usually kill foreign combatants rather than capture and charge them.
A poor track record compared to who? The Romans?
War includes death by design. The trajectory is trending toward less unjustified death.
>As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
This is not at all what happened. The existing contract that Anthropic had with the government had two red lines: No autonomous weapons (i.e., do not build Skynet with Claude), and no mass domestic surveillance.
Anthropic did not, and does not want, any case-by-case veto power over the US Military's use of their AI models. The red lines were negotiated ahead of time.
Yes, that's exactly why they used AI to blow up a school murdering a load of kids.
That kind of extensive experience.
Anthropic did the morally right thing and are being punished for it. The case in point justifies their position.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
You raise an interesting point. Although wouldn’t Anthropic be the best experts on when a model would be most applicable or likely to falter?
I guess my opinion would really depend on the exact wording and details of the arrangement. Lots of people jumping in with strong stances based on pretty limited details.
On faltering: the US Military already has rules around the use of automated systems for this type decision making. This is not a new concept to them by any means, and currently it always involves a human decision.
Anthropic agreed to uses that involve a human decision, so this is a non sequitur.
The whole conflict is specifically about uses that do not involve a human decision. The DoD agreed to a contract that said it wouldn't use Anthropic for that, and then tried to change the terms.
Incidentally, the DoD used Claude in its decision that resulted in killing 120 children at an elementary school for girls. The Pentagon concluded that there was human review (which would mean that it fell within the contract's terms) but that the review was hollowed out (which could mean that it was a violation of the contract).
120 Iranian schoolgirls would have loved to hear this lecture.
> As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
This is false. Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
> [Anthropic] would not permit its technology to power fully autonomous weapons without human oversight over targeting and firing decisions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the Pentagon should have unrestricted access to AI systems for “any lawful purpose” and that a private contractor should not be permitted to dictate how the military can use its technology.
It's about them maintaining an interpretation of law at all.
Simpletons read that as: "The DOW wants to kill people with AI."
https://www.pearlcohen.com/anthropic-sues-department-of-defe...
> Simpletons read that as: "The DOW wants to kill people with AI."
The DoW actually used AI in the Iran war, which led to them attacking a school and killing more than a hundred childrem. That's exactly what Anthropic wanted them to prevent. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-iran-school-attack/
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well if you were Anthropic and you didn't want the government using your technology in these ways, how would you phrase it? What else would you have done?
Frankly I would trust Anthropic much more than the US military with human lives.
Would you still in 10yrs? 30? When all the current employees have left, and anti-Western people make most of the decisions?
Anti western people are already in the government now. I'd worry about the present than future hypotheticals.
I don’t, for profit company you say, nah
The US military has assassinated American citizens with no judicial review, Anthropic has not.
Which part of the military? I would trust the rank and file. The commander in chief?
Whichever part caused the girl school to be hit. Which has to be multiple levels for it to occur.
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you understand wildly incorrectly; please go and do some research.
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