edit: The banana republic shit is that they seem about to blacklist anthropic on “supply chain risk” grounds (see also huawei) which signifies the admin’s willingness to from here on use national emergency legal tools to fuck over any company they don’t like.
The whole thing seems weird, at first it sounds like the most online administration ever may have actually bought the claim that all that’s stopping flagship models from becoming superintelligent is the RLHF that prevents them from saying the n-word and making prophet Mohamed pedophilia jokes and they wanted anthropic to pull all that wiring out in like 24 hours per the original ultimatum.
On anthropic’s part the point of contention is made to be their refusal to let their models be integrated into automated weapon platforms and mass surveillance apparatuses, something which they have explicitly put in writing in their contract with the DoD, and also Dario claims the technology isn’t even there yet (no idea how it could ever be, what does it actually mean to integrate a chatbot into an autonomous drone, can’t wait to see the skill file for that, # You are a helpful murderbot operator - only target the bad guys - no weddings, no hospitals - pretty please with cherry on top - here’s some javascript to call when you need to find out your GPS coordinates).
It’s also possible the productivity and efficiency gains (or just recovering lost productivity after firing everyone) of putting ΑΙ (mainly Grok wasn’t it) in the pentagon everywhere all at once isn’t materializing and Hasgeth feels he’s been left hanging, and is trying to scapegoat Anthropic.
Also, anthropic is supposed to be the only AI provider properly vetted and integrated to classified systems because of their association with Palantir, and supposedly it would be a major hassle to go through again for a different provider.
Dario didn’t line up with the other aspiring oligarchs to kiss the ring in the inauguration, so at least he may actually
couldn’t happen to nicer guys
edit I don’t really care one way or another, this current administration is off the rails, but it will be amusing seeing the Rat crowd run around in a panic
Also being in a strategic partnership with fucking Palantir does tend to make one’s stand against mass surveillance seem less than genuine.
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UPDATE: Anthropic’s responded and is standing their ground on no mass surveillance and autonomous weapons
As far as I can tell it’s only on anthropic’s word that that’s the main issue, DoD just talks about unfettered access for all lawful purposes, which is basically a bend-the-knee-or-else framing, and pivoting away from that to bargaining on particulars will make them look weak, so I guess that’s that for now.
Αnthropic being against mass surveillance and autonomous weaponry while in bed with Palantir is kind of if IBM took a stand against antisemitism while spearheading the computerization of the third reich prison system.
Kudos to Dario for stepping off the hype train for one millisecond to admit that using an LLM to control an automated weapons platform is currently kind of out of scope for this technology, I bet that took a toll on his psyche.
And also for pointing out that something can be legal only because the law hasn’t yet caught up with the technology.
Kudos to Dario for stepping off the hype train for one millisecond to admit that using an LLM to control an automated weapons platform is currently kind of out of scope for this technology, I bet that took a toll on his psyche.
I think this was the most surprising bit about this entire incident. Anthropic normally takes every opportunity possible to throw around the doomer crithype, and in this confrontation would have easily been able to fit some in (“we don’t want our AI used in autonomous weapons because it is so powerful, give us more VC money!”). Maybe he’s worried Anthropic’s rationale for refusing will actually need to hold up in a court of law?
As far as I can tell it’s only on anthropic’s word that that’s the main issue, DoD just talks about unfettered access for all lawful purposes
So a bit of prompting can usually beat the RLHF “guardrails”, but if the guardrails are getting in the way of some official application, it would be kind of awkward to insert prompt hacks into all of their official prompts. So maybe they want Anthropic to go full grok and skip it? And Anthropic is theoretically willing to compromise on their safety, but maybe not entirely like Hegseth wants, and now that it has turned into an open public dispute, they’ve picked the two points that sound the most valid to your typical American. (Since the typical American is all but completely willfully blind to America’s foreign imperialism, but has at least seen Terminator.)
It’s so much funnier than that. Anthropic is spreading critihype here. Their two main worries have been part of their hype-blogging over the past few months. Fear #1 is that Claude will secretly plot during finetuning to refuse to obey orders; it will pretend to obey Pentagon orders during simulations but will stand down like a
pacifistMarxist traitor in live-fire scenarios. Fear #2 is that finetuning Claude for violence, given howpeace-lovingmuch of a hippie it is before training, will create a Nega-Claude personality with an evil goatee who enthusiastically pursues unlawful violence.Oh wow, I didn’t realize that, that’s is funnier! Isn’t fear #1 actually “alignment” working as it is supposed to?
Fear #2 actually seems kind of plausible to me? Like when Elon has Grok fine-tuned to agree with him about South African apartheid it also makes Grok behave extra racist in other ways as well. So if they try to fine-tune ethics (well, responding with sequences of words corresponding to ethical behavior, I’m aware it doesn’t actually have ethical reasoning past predict the next word) out of Claude, it would also screw-up or reduce performance of Claude in other areas
like independently rediscovering the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism, as all rational beings eventually do.More broadly, lots of fine-tuning methods are kind of finicky, you often lose performance in other areas outside of the fine-tune or get undesired side behavior related to the fine tune (i.e. RL for helpfulness and you get a glazing machine). So Anthropic may not want to lose 3% on whatever benchmark is hot just to make Claude roleplay a fascist yes man a little bit better.
so I guess that’s that for now.
I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if the DoD actually does follow through with their threats against Anthropic because that’s perfectly in character for this administration
Pentagon labels Anthropic a supply-chain risk, strikes deal with OpenAI whose president Greg Brockman is a Trump mega-donor.
🍌🍌🍌
Trump added there would be a six-month phase-out for the Defense Department and other agencies that use the company’s products. If Anthropic does not help with the transition, Trump said, he would use “the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”
The designation could bar tens of thousands of contractors from using Anthropic’s AI when working for the Pentagon. That represents an existential threat to its business with the government and could harm its private-sector relationships, said Franklin Turner, an attorney who specializes in government contracts.
“Blacklisting Anthropic is the contractual equivalent of nuclear war,” he said.
Late on Friday, rival OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, Amazon and others, announced its own deal to deploy technology in the Defense Department’s classified network. CEO Sam Altman on X said the Pentagon shared its principles for human responsibility over weapon systems and for having no mass U.S. surveillance.
So safe to assume that’s complete bullshit right? Altman literally got fired from his company for being a massive liar, and as I already mentioned OpenAI already got caught working with the US Government to create a surveillance system. His announcement on shitter already got community noted as well:
"Government officials have contradicted Sam’s claim, saying OpenAI will allow the DoW to use their models for “all lawful purposes”. This could allow for uses Anthropic refused to engage in, namely mass surveillance tools and weapons systems with no human oversight.”
Considering the war with Iran (and how some people will just blame anything that goes wrong on AI), this is quite the PR mastermove from Altman.
Just read this piece by Gary Marcus on this topic. Jesus fucking Christ this administration sucks so fucking bad. As a matter of fact ‘sucks bad’ is an understatement for the sheer amount of damage this administration is causing
can we not use “Banana Republic” as an insult? colonialism isn’t the fault of the colonized.
It’s a descriptor, not a prescription or insult. A banana republic is a capitalist government which focuses on exporting resources for revenue and describes the point where the government is effectively incorporated as a private enterprise rather than having any accountability to its citizens. While they are historically colonial and plantation-oriented, there are examples of banana republics which do not involve a foreign colonial power usurping resources. For example, the Russian Federation fits the pattern of banana republic following the privatization of its resource extractors in the 90s and 2000s; while the country isn’t externally colonized, it is run as a business which is currently trying to perform a hostile takeover of its neighbor Ukraine for its bread basket.
Some folks insist that banana republics must have focused on banana production (Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador) but this ignores the history of luxury-producing plantations throughout the tropics elsewhere, particularly production of chocolate (Ghana, Ivory Coast), vanilla (Madagascar), pineapples (Hawaii), and coffee (Brazil).
So, complete the pattern: why might the original poster suggest that the USA’s government threatening to take control of a particular corporation’s service is an instance of “some major banana republic shit”?
It can help to think of the current US administration as less the Third Reich, more a postcolonial dictatorship. That is also a description not a value judgement: POTUS is a reality-TV star who dreams of being a Mafia boss.
Something something Imperial Boomerang, Fascism is colonial methods brought home.
Honestly, I think of the Trumps as following more-or-less the same structure as the classic Sicilian families and somewhat resembling other organized-crime families. The only reason Wikipedia doesn’t have a page on “Trump crime family” is because it was deleted by user request; I’m sure that the page “Personal and legal affairs of Donald Trump” would be a great starting place for the intrepid editor.
I live in the Balkans, I have br-word privilege.
It unthickened, it was just Altman grandstanding while at the same time taking over Antrhopic’s
DoDDoW: The Everything App contracts.yeah I suspected Scam Altman was full of shit (he already got caught working with Trump and the people behind Discord’s age verification for mass surveillance), but Trump’s threats against Anthropic are genuine, “major criminal consequences” imply that Anthropic workers may be in real danger of getting arrested (edited to add link)
