[bigDinosaur]

How is that not a line of principle? Principle doesn't mean where we'd all agree, nor does it mean what we'd deem acceptable, it just means there is a line somewhere - and mass surveillance or fully autonomous AI in the kill chain is a very clear principle.

[jLaForest]

It's unprincipled because the implication is that once claude improves enough to be trusted with autonomous killing the company will be ok with it.

[elefanten]

But to gp's point, that is a principle. Perhaps not yours, but they outlined their stance and stuck to it despite threats and consequences.

Contrast Sam's OpenAI announcement which was very carefully worded to appear to uphold the same principles, but is currently being rightfully disassembled as retaining various potential outs that would allow violating the signaled principles.

Honest and staunch about clearly stated principles is better than wiggly and dishonest about weasel-worded impressions of a principle.

And all of that is orthogonal to whether you (or anyone) agrees with a given principle or given revealed behavior.