[ripvanwinkle]

One observation.

Having your work being used by the govt in ways you disagree with feels similar to having your taxes used in ways you disagree.

When you pay taxes you have no say in the bombs acquired with that and where they are dropped. The latter though doesn't seem to provoke the same push back

[Barrin92]

you answered your own implicit question. You have a choice who you sell your work to, you don't have a choice what your taxes do. Seems pretty straight forward why the former elicits more push back. The government forces you to pay taxes it doesn't force you to build them tools of surveillance or weapons.

[ripvanwinkle]

IF the feds are a sufficiently large market your viability as a business might depend on keeping them happy.

btw i am not making a judgement call on the ai usage issue itself, just saying that this and taxes are more equivalent than it might seem

[Barrin92]

>IF the feds are a sufficiently large market your viability as a business

sure if you're Lockheed you might be screwed, but that's not the case for Google. Military contracts, or even government contracts as a whole are a tiny fraction of the King Kong Sized gorilla that is Google.

The fact that Anthropic puts up a fight but OpenAI/Microsoft and Google don't I find hard to characterize as anything other than pathetic. These guys could, if the wanted to, afford a lawyer or to two to push back on the administration. They do that pretty successfully with their taxes in most places btw.

[jMyles]

> When you pay taxes you have no say in the bombs acquired with that and where they are dropped. The latter though doesn't seem to provoke the same push back

Indeed - paying "taxes" to a murderous entity is a horrible affront to morality and humanity. We do it because we're terrified; we are not perfect moral creatures. But we still know it's wrong.

[dmit]

> When you pay taxes you have no say in the bombs acquired with that and where they are dropped.

Vote in elections, local and general.