On Friday afternoon, Anthropic learned that the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your credit-card transactions, all of which could be cross-referenced with other details about your life. Anthropic’s leadership told Hegseth’s team that was a bridge too far, and the deal fell apart.
On Friday afternoon, Anthropic learned that the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your credit-card transactions, all of which could be cross-referenced with other details about your life.
So that’s what OpenAI will now do for them…
Anthropic had not argued that such weapons should not exist. To the contrary, the company had offered to work directly with the Pentagon to improve their reliability.
…
this impasse over autonomous weapons could be resolved if the Pentagon would simply promise to keep the company’s AI in the cloud, and out of the weapons themselves.
djeez… Anthropic does not come off as nice as before
The bar is so low. Anthropic is only trying to raise it ever so slightly.
e: Also, the US military reportedly used Claude in Iran strikes despite Trump’s ban.
Trumps ban doesn’t go in full effect until a few months from now on AFAIK
According to the Journal, US military command used [Anthropic’s] tools for intelligence purposes, as well as to help select targets and carry out battlefield simulations.
I’m learning that Hegseth is getting rid of analysts and trusting the Averaging Engine to find datum that are obvious but still sound insightful to people who don’t read for fun.
The longer I love the more wisdom I see in Tolkien’s notion that evil is self defeating. It is terrible for a time but not forever. Evil uses the most incompetent people for the job.
There’s another Tolkien’s notion, one expressed by Eomer, how Rohirrim don’t lie and thus are hard to deceive.
The concept of some insight, mystery, deeper knowledge in that context seems similar to lies for me.
Perhaps Hegseth’s approach and tooling are enough to be as significant as the evil that Tolkien’s characters did put some effort into defeating, not waiting till it defeats itself.
Finally, some article points out the obvious: that Anthropic has been jockeying for fully autonomous weapons the entire time.
Partially autonomous weapons… are vital to the defense of democracy. Fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems.
Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters.
Dario Amodei prides himself on being complicit:
Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.
He believes he has a perfect track record with the Pentagon.
To the best of our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.
And he is apparently on the side of every American military action, from bombing fishermen to bombing Iran.
Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so.