[danbrooks]

Props to Dario and Anthropic for taking a moral stand. A rarity in tech these days.

[janalsncm]

Agreed. You don’t have to be an LLM maximalist or a doomer to see the opportunity for real, practical danger from ubiquitous surveillance and autonomous weapons. It would have been extremely easy for Dario to demonstrate the same level of backbone as Sam Altman or Sundar Pichai.

[Computer0]

There is no moral leg to stand on here, he says here in plain english that if they wanted to use CLAUDE to perform mass surveillance on Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, that is perfectly fine.

[buzzerbetrayed]

Perhaps you just have different moral values? I suspect each of the countries you mentioned spy on us. I also suspect we spy on them. I’m glad an American company wouldn’t be so foolish as to pretend otherwise.

[sfink]

This is a public note, but directed at the current administration, so reading it as a description of what is or is not moral is completely missing the point. This note is saying (1) we refuse to be used in this way, and (2) we are going to use "mass surveillance of US citizens" as our defensive line because it is at least backed by Constitutional arguments. Those same arguments ought to apply more broadly, but attempts to use them that way have already been trampled on and so would only weaken the arguments as a defense.

If it helps: refusing to tune Claude for domestic surveillance will also enable refusing to do the same for other surveillance, because they can make the honest argument that most things you'd do to improve Claude for any mass surveillance will also assist in domestic mass surveillance.

[dddgghhbbfblk]

A moral stand? ... What? Did we read the same statement? It opens right out the gate with:

>I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.

>Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. We were the first frontier AI company to deploy our models in the US government’s classified networks, the first to deploy them at the National Laboratories, and the first to provide custom models for national security customers. Claude is extensively deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.

which I find frankly disgusting.

[adastra22]

Freedom isn’t free. Someone has to defend the democratic values that you and I take for granted.

Dario’s statement is in support of the institution, not the current administration.

[tylerchilds]

I feel like the deepest technical definition of autocratic is “fully autonomous weapons”?

[joemi]

They are undeniably taking a moral stand. Among other things, the statement explains that there are two use cases that they refuse to do. This is a moral stand. It might not align with your morals, but it's still a moral stand.

[ben_w]

For now is all we ever have, unfortunately.

I miss the days when the mega-brands whose work I admired, still did such works.

[Qem]

> Anthropic will betray you for a multi-year government contract worth tens of billions of dollars.

What are the odds they will rebrand Misanthropic by then?

[ternwer]

So you think we should never support them doing something "positive"? What incentive does that give?

[astrange]

Anthropic is a PBC and if they violate the terms of that the shareholders (you) can sue them for securities fraud.

[ekianjo]

You know this is pure PR right?

[reasonableklout]

If Anthropic is nationalized or declared a supply chain risk tomorrow, will you say the same?

[flawn]

What do you mean? You think Hegseth and Anthropic are doing this for PR reasons?

[Fricken]

We knew long before AI was a twinkle in Amodel's eye that if it were to be built, then it would be co-opted by thugs.

Anthropic's statement is little more than pageantry from the knowing and willing creators of a monster.

[xvector]

You're right, we should never build anything because bad people might try to use it. Everyone that has progressed technology is a monster!

[bogzz]

This is not how the word "moral" should be used in a sentence that also has the name Dario Amodei in it.

[plaidthunder]

Words are cheap. Actions aren't. Dario Amodei is putting his company on the line for what he believes in. That's courage, character and... yes, morality.

[davidw]

It's a little bit better than so many sniveling, cowardly elites are doing right now.