alt Hacker NewsIf I produce and sell widgets in my widget shop, then nobody but me gets to decide how I make those widgets.
The government can come into my shop and order sixty thousand widgets built exactly the way they say they want them built, and it may be something that doesn't run afoul of any laws at all.
But that doesn't mean that I am required or compelled to build widgets their way -- or at all.
I'm free to tell them to fuck off.
The government can then find go someone else to build widgets to their specifications (or not; that's very distinctly not my problem).
Replies
basket_horse • yesterday at 9:28 PM
And that’s what’s happening here. The government is telling Anthropic to fuck off and they are finding someone else
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Yes but then the government can decide that the widget, which can suddenly and arbitrarily break and cause havoc because it doesn't work according to the government's desired spec, is risky to use and advise their other vendors to avoid it. And now we've caught up to today's story.
So we agree that everything is fine here, and that the only unreasonable position is that the military should pay for or endorse a supplier that tells the military to "fuck off". Yes?