[fauigerzigerk]

Anthropic doesn't object to fully autonomous AI use by the military in principle. What they're saying is that their current models are not fit for that purpose.

That's not the same thing as delivering a weapon that has a certain capability but then put policy restrictions on its use, which is what your comparison suggests.

The key question here is who gets to decide whether or not a particular version of a model is safe enough for use in fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic wants a veto on this and the government doesn't want to grant them that veto.

[skissane]

Let me put it this way–if Boeing is developing a new missile, and they say to the Pentagon–"this missile can't be used yet, it isn't safe"–and the Pentagon replies "we don't care, we'll bear that risk, send us the prototype, we want to use it right now"–how does Boeing respond?

I expect they'll ask the Pentagon to sign a liability disclaimer and then send it anyway.

Whereas, Anthropic is saying they'll refuse to let the Pentagon use their technology in ways they consider unsafe, even if Pentagon indemnifies Anthropic for the consequences. That's very different from how Boeing would behave.

[Atreiden]

Why are we gauging our ethical barometer on the actions of existing companies and DoD contractors? the military industrial apparatus has been insane for far too long, as Eisenhower warned of.

When we're entering the realm of "there isn't even a human being in the decision loop, fully autonomous systems will now be used to kill people and exert control over domestic populations" maybe we should take a step back and examine our position. Does this lead to a societal outcome that is good for People?

The answer is unabashedly No. We have multiple entire genres of books and media, going back over 50 years, that illustrate the potential future consequences of such a dynamic.

[snickerbockers]

There are two separate aspects to this case.

* autonomous weapons systems

* private defense contractor leverages control over products it has already sold to set military doctrine.

The second one is at least as important as the first one, because handing over our defense capabilities to a private entity which is accountable to nobody but it's shareholders and executive management isn't any better than handing them over to an LLM afflicted with something resembling BPD. The first problem absolutely needs to be solved but the solution cannot be to normalize the second problem.