alt Hacker NewsI still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.
Isn't this basically what Anthropic wanted?
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Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.
And crucially, the DoD, through the normal procurement process, agreed to Anthropic’s terms and made the purchase. Much later, the Secretary of Defense threw a political fit and tried to change the terms.
You're skipping the supply chain risk designation, which is an extraordinary and punitive measure. Without that part, you'd be correct that this is a nothingburger. "Government decides to not renew contract with corporation X and goes with Y instead" is not headline news.
No it's not. Anthropic didn't want an AI to make battlefield decision on who gets killed because it's too unreliable. That doesn't mean they don't want AI used in the military supply chain.
And it also doesn't mean that Anthropic is a supply chain risk merely for not wanting AI to be the active decision maker in live or death situations in war.
And Anthropic's objection was recently confirmed: the US military blew up a school in Iran due to an AI error, and killed more than a hundred kids.
The Pentagon is trying to bully contractors into also not using Anthropic's models
No. This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.
Anthropic isn’t aligned with MAGA political ideology so they found an excuse to abuse power against them, more or less. The excuse was because Anthropic prohibits the use of their models for autonomous killing without a human in the loop they were declared a threat to national security on par with Iran or North Korea from a supply chain perspective in the military. OpenAI then rushed in and volunteered to build the slaughterbots ASAP, likely specially tuned to whomever Trump has taken a disliking to in his ambien stupors. Welcome to the future!
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As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question, and have spent centuries refining their practices. Deferring that to a private company is actually a major regression and a concerning role to pass on to the public regardless.
FWIW I am not pro military, but it's a prominent part of human culture and not going away anytime soon. I do understand the nature of professions, however, and only one of these groups has made the interpretation of this question their specialization.