Anthropic’s Statement on the Department of War’s Demands

Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, earlier this week ordered Anthropic, the company that makes Claude artificial intelligence products, to allow the Department of War unrestricted use of Claude. Anthropic is resisting, saying that certain restrictions on Claude’s use are necessary to protect “democratic values”. Below is an excerpt from a statement by Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, about the conflict, which I thought made for an interesting read, especially for people working in social and political philosophy, philosophy of war, and business ethics. Certainly some readers will dismiss what follows as a marketing tactic or corporate propaganda, which it may be. But nonetheless, its content raises important and interesting issues. Here’s the excerpt: 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. However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do. Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now: Mass domestic surveillance. We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values. AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up with the rapidly growing capabilities of AI. For example, under current law, the government can purchase detailed records of Americans’ movements, web browsing, and associations from public sources without obtaining a warrant, a practice the Intelligence Community has acknowledged raises privacy concerns and that has generated bipartisan opposition in Congress. Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person’s life—automatically and at massive scale. Fully autonomous weapons. Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging.. The post Anthropic’s Statement on the Department of War’s Demands first appeared on Daily Nous.