alt Hacker NewsI don't think it's about lethal autonomy specifically as much as it's just about government autonomy period. They don’t think private companies should have any veto power over how the government uses some technology they're provided.
On its face that’s not a crazy stance: Governments are meant to represent the public, while private companies obviously aren't. I think it’s somewhat understandable why the government might reject that kind of "we know better than you" type of clause.
Of course, the reaction is wildly out of proportion. A normal response would just be to stop doing business with the company and move on. Labeling them a supply chain risk is an extreme response.
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Agree, and I think the labeling of them (Anthropic) a supply chain risk was handled poorly and will likely be reverted over time. That being said, I would be nervous if I was in the Pentagon and depended on Anthropic tooling for something, even if that something was unrelated to kinetic operations. How do they audit that Anthropic can't alter model outputs for contexts they (the ethics board or whatever it's called, can't remember) don't like? If you sell a weapon to the department that is in charge of killing people and breaking things, you don't get a say in who gets killed or how. It's never worked like that.
Maybe the argument is that they should, but I don't agree with that. If Anthropic or any of these other vendors have reservations about the logical conclusion of how these tools will be/are used then they should not sell to the government. Simple as. However ... if the claims Anthropic et al make about how these systems will develop and the capabilities they will have are at all true, then the government will come knocking anyway.
> They don’t think private companies should have any veto power over how the government uses some technology they're provided.
On the other hand, why should the government have infinite power to override how a business operates? If you're not able to refuse to sell to the government, isn't that basically forced speech and/or forced labor?
It’s not obvious that the government should have to power to overwrite this, the US constitution was written as a collection of negative rights exactly to rein in government dictatorial impulses.
And now that we see the government blatantly disrespecting the constitution and the rule of law the civil community must react.
Additionally that kind of public trust only works if you have a government operating under the constraints of a legal framework, and to a lesser extent, an ethical framework. When a government serves the whims of an individual and instead of the function of their office, shirking agreed upon laws, etc, then you no longer have a government serving the people.