[bambax]

This last development is much to the honor of Anthropic and Amodei and confirms what you're saying.

What I don't get though is, why did the so-called "Department of War" target Anthropic specifically? What about the others, esp. OpenAI? Have they already agreed to cooperate? or already refused? Why aren't they part of this?

[roughly]

> What I don't get though is, why did the so-called "Department of War" target Anthropic specifically?

Because Anthropic told them no, and this administration plays by authoritarian rules - 10 people saying yes doesn’t matter, one person saying no is a threat and an affront. It doesn’t matter if there’s equivalent or even better alternatives, it wouldn’t even matter if the DoD had no interest in using Anthropic - Anthropic told them no, and they cannot abide that.

[rhubarbtree]

More importantly, Anthropic has the best model by a golden country mile and the US military complex wants it.

[D_Alex]

I'm a bit underwhelmed tbh. Here is Anthropic's motto:

"At Anthropic, we build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being."

Why does Anthropic even deal with the Department of @#$%ing WAR?

And what does Amodei mean by "defeat" in his first paragraph?

[jazzyjackson]

DoD and American exceptionalists also believe American foreign policy is in service of humanity’s long term well being

[parasubvert]

There was a time (1943?) when dealing with the US department of war meant serving for humanity's long-term well being.

[moozooh]

Look up when Anthropic signed a contract with Palantir and then look up what Palantir does if you want an even better reality check on following the ideals. I chuckle every time.

And nobody knows what he means by "defeat" because no journalist interrogates or pushes back on his grand statements when they hear it. Amodei has a history of claiming they need to "empower democracies with powerful AI" before [China] gets to it first but he never elaborates on why or what he expects to happen if the opposite comes to pass. I am assuming he means China will inevitably wage cyberwar on the US unless the US has a "nuclear deterrent" for that kind of thing. But seeing how this administration handles its own AI vendors, I am currently more afraid of such "empowered democracy" than China. Because of Greenland, because of "our hemisphere". Hard nope to that.

Oh, btw, Dario isn't against the DoD using Claude for mass surveillance outside of the US; he basically says it outright in the text. Humanity stops at Americans.

[Synthpixel]

Anthropic can serve its models within the security standards required to handle classified data. The other labs do not yet claim to have this capability.

Even if they do, I assume the other labs would prefer to avoid drawing the ire of the administration, the public, or their employees by choosing a side publicly.

[bambax]

But how can they avoid it, why are they not asked?

[tpm]

Anthropic is already cooperating with the DoD, presumably fulfilling all the conditions and the DoD likes their stuff so much it wants to use it more broadly, so they want to change the terms of the agreement(s). Anthropic disagrees on some points; DoD wants to force them to agree.