> I thought "Anthropic" was about being concerned about humans

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I think it's phrased just fine. It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future.

Also, as someone from a country that has been attacked and dragged into war, I would prefer machines fighting (and being destroyed autonomously) rather than my people dying, nor people from any nation that came to help.

That's as Anthropic as it gets if your nerve expands a little bit further than your HOA.

I'm glad I'm not alone in finding the specific emphasis on drawing the line at domestic surveillance a bit odd. Later they also state they are against "provid[ing] a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk" (emphasis mine). Either way I'm glad they have lines at all, but it doesn't come across as particularly reassuring for people in places the US targets (wedding hosts and guests for example).

I think it goes without saying that ones the systems are reliable, fully-autonomous weapons will be unleashed on the battlefield. But they have to have safeguards to ensure that they don't turn on friendly forces and only kill the enemy. What Anthropic is saying, is that right now - they can't provide those assurances. When they can - I suspect those restrictions will be relaxed.

What else would you expect? The military is obviously going to develop the most powerful systems they can. Do you want a tech company to say “the military can never use our stuff for autonomous systems forever, the end”? What if Anthropic ends up developing the safest, most cost effective systems for that purpose?

Well, if they hadn't stated that were that far in line with the administration's ideals, they would likely already be fully blacklisted as enemies of the state. Whether they agree with what they're saying or not, they're walking on egg shells.

What a shame, indeed. Chinese and Russians would never do something like that and hurt either their or your people, too

Fully autonomous weapons are a danger even if we can reliably make it happen with or without AI.

It essentially becomes a computer against human. And such software if and when developed, who's going to stop it from going to the masses? imagine a software virues/malwares that can take a life.

I'm shocked very few are even bothered about this and is really concerning that technology developed for the welfare could become something totally against humans.

Is it seriously called the department of war now? Did they change that from DoD?

They also posted on Instagram saying autonomous killing would hurt Americans. So non American people don’t matter?

As a practical matter, it makes zero sense for a tech company with perhaps laudable goals and concerns about humanity to have any control whatsoever over the use of a product it sells for war. You don't like what it could potentially be used for, or are having second thoughts about being involved in war making at all, don't sell it, which appears to be Amodei's position now. That's perhaps laudable, from a certain point of view.

On the other hand, your position is at best misguided and at worst hopelessly naive. The probability that adversaries of the United States, potential or not, are having these discussions about AI release authority and HITL kill chains is basically zero, other then doing so at a technical level so they get them right. We're over the event horizon already, and into some very harsh and brutal game theory.

You gotta keep in mind that the primary goal of this statement is to avert the invocation of the defense production act.

He is trying to win sympathies even (or especially?) among nationalist hawks.

I said exactly this a few days ago elsewhere. It’s disappointing that they (and often other American companies) seem to restrict their “respect” and morals to Americans only. Or maybe it’s just semantics or context because the topic at hand is about americans? I don’t know but it gives “my people are more important than your people”, exactly as you said in your last paragraph

They’re being used today by the military. So, they are never going to be against mass surveillance. They can scope that to be domestic mass surveillance though.

> the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"?

Sounds more like the door is open for this once reliability targets are met.

I don't think that's unreasonable. Hardware and regular software also have their own reliability limitations, not to mention the meatsacks behind the joystick.

We already have traditional CV algorithms and control systems that can reliably power autonomous weapons systems and they are more deterministic and reliable than "AI" or LLMs.

Unfortunately I think the writing is clearly on the wall. Fully autonomous weapons are coming soon

The Ghandi of the corporate world is yet to be found

Enemies will have AI powered weapons. We need to be at the cutting edge of capability.

> And neither denounces partially autonomous mass surveillance nor closes the door on AI-driven foreign mass surveillance

You have to be deliberately naive in a world where five eyes exists to somehow believe that "foreign" mass surveillance won't be used domestically.

So AI systems are not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons but they are reliable enough to end all white-collar work in the next 12 months?

Odd.

The sentence prior explicitly says this. There’s no dishonesty here.

“Even fully autonomous weapons (…) may prove critical for our national defense”

FWIW there’s simply no way around this in the end. If your even attempts to create such weapons, the only possible defensive counter is weapons of a similar nature.

Anthropic doesn't forbid DoW from using the models for foreign surveillance. It's not about harming others, it's about doing what is best for humanity in the long run, all things considered. I personally do not believe that foreign surveillance is automatically harmful and I'm fine with our military doing it

If the United States is ever, in the future, at war with an adversary using truly autonomous and functional killing machines; you may find yourself praying that we have our own rather than praying human nature changes. Of course, we must strive for this to never happen; but carrying a huge stick seems to be the most effective way to reduce human death and suffering from armed conflict.