Ok, I'll be precise: the main dispute was over fully autonomous decisions to use lethal force. Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't. Whether that is a war crime hinges upon whether it was reckless. Anthropic's position was that AI is not capable of making such decisions, which is another way of saying that giving that decision wholly to an AI is reckless. I can stop using the term "war crimes" if it bothers you so much, but I'm failing to see a distinction between what Anthropic was fearing and the definition of what a war crime is. These are fears, so this isn't about whether one specific action was a war crime or not. This is just naming what Anthropic was worried about and why.
> Anthropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that
Cite one source for Anthropic demanding to be in the loop. This was about the terms of a contract. If I'm agreeing to sell you a medicine, under the condition that you do not use it to euthanize homeless people, that does not mean I am demanding to follow you around and make you ask me whether each use is ok.
> Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
Strawman much? The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company. It doesn't matter whether there are other customers. It doesn't matter whether the company can survive the attack. What matters is whether it is legal and ethical for our public resources to be used for retaliation in this way.
> US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes....I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models"
This is an invented claim. Cite a source.
>> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident
>
> And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
The argument was the first part of the post. This part was me giving my perspective on things, in this case it was about how I don't find Anthropic's position to be good, just that OpenAI's is far worse. My post was not for you exclusively; based on what you have written, I have concluded that there is no value in debating you or attempting changing your mind.
>> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
>
> You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice.
Ok, fair. Sticking to facts: the crucial part of the negotiation was about whether the DoD can use Anthropic's products for autonomous decisions on lethal force. Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren. (The Palantir Maven Smart System, fwiw, not Claude.) The Pentagon investigated and found that although a human was theoretically in the decision loop, in practice the oversight was minimal and ineffective. "No one remaining on those teams [the teams tasked with minimizing civilian harm] reviewed the strike plans in advance of the attack on the school, according to Bloomberg." Those teams had been gutted, with Hegseth explicitly stating that they were getting in the way.
My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
> Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't.
Regrettably, this already is happening today, and have been happening since there was a military. All the time. Intel is imperfect, situation changes quickly, people make mistakes, shit happens. The army is not interested in increasing the number of such occurrences - because the army is not incentivized on destroying targets it wasn't asked to destroy. But it still happens. It happened without AI and it will happen with AI. Putting mandatory human in the loop may be a ideological and philosophical choice, but I don't see any argument here it will always reduce such occurrences. In fact, if anything, it might increase them - humans are known for hundreds of cognitive biases.
> The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company.
No company is owed contract from the US government. Of course, companies that get a lot of contracts from US government, may profit more than ones that do not, but it still don't create any entitlement. US government has its specs, Antropic is unwilling to make a product for those specs, so US government is not buying from Antropic. Presenting not-buying decision as a hostile action implies there's an entitlement to be a supplier, and such entitlement does not exist.
> Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren.
We are getting into the territory of "70% of traffic crashes are blamed on sober drivers, therefore driving sober is a crime". OF COURSE once AI starts to be used, somebody will eventually make a bad call, somebody gets fed bad intel, something changes and somebody does not notice, and AI would be used in a chain that led to a disaster. AI is not God and is not Oracle of Truth, it's a tool. Every tool is imperfect and depends on its inputs and it's usage. Every tool has boundaries of usability and error margins. You can not change it coming with your post-hoc knowledge and pontificating that if some mythical all knowing human happened to be in the chain at the precisely correct moment he'd prevent the tragedy. Such human never exists at-the-time, only post-hoc, when all the social media is full of them, and there's no AI that allows you to read tomorrow's Twitter, and never will be. Claiming that DOD should not ever use tool X in a scenario that could lead to a disaster is claiming to never use tool X at all - because every practical scenario with practical assumptions can. And ultimately, it's a call for DOD to never exists as a military. Which I guess would be fine with some folks, but I think you'd not expect DOD to agree with that.
> My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
As I said, extensively, the reality of warmaking will inevitably lead to innocent civilian casualties. There never was, and never will be, a war (at least real, hot, shooting war) where innocents would not be suffering. It's not the intention of DOD, it's the reality of how things happen. Now we learn your definition of "war crimes" includes, essentially, any warmaking of sufficient scale in time and space that will inevitably cause innocent casualties, and with sufficient scale, they could be claimed as "large". In other words, every (big enough) war is a crime. It is a possible position, even if a bit too idealistic and high-horse-y to my taste. But I think now at least you can appreciate why it would be very imprudent for DOD to subject themselves to people who would limit their capabilities based on such sort of definitions?
> Anthropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that
Cite one source for Anthropic demanding to be in the loop. This was about the terms of a contract. If I'm agreeing to sell you a medicine, under the condition that you do not use it to euthanize homeless people, that does not mean I am demanding to follow you around and make you ask me whether each use is ok.
> Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
Strawman much? The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company. It doesn't matter whether there are other customers. It doesn't matter whether the company can survive the attack. What matters is whether it is legal and ethical for our public resources to be used for retaliation in this way.
> US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes....I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models"
This is an invented claim. Cite a source.
>> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident > > And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
The argument was the first part of the post. This part was me giving my perspective on things, in this case it was about how I don't find Anthropic's position to be good, just that OpenAI's is far worse. My post was not for you exclusively; based on what you have written, I have concluded that there is no value in debating you or attempting changing your mind.
>> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes. > > You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice.
Ok, fair. Sticking to facts: the crucial part of the negotiation was about whether the DoD can use Anthropic's products for autonomous decisions on lethal force. Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren. (The Palantir Maven Smart System, fwiw, not Claude.) The Pentagon investigated and found that although a human was theoretically in the decision loop, in practice the oversight was minimal and ineffective. "No one remaining on those teams [the teams tasked with minimizing civilian harm] reviewed the strike plans in advance of the attack on the school, according to Bloomberg." Those teams had been gutted, with Hegseth explicitly stating that they were getting in the way.
My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.