AI vs The Pentagon: Ethics, Surveillance & The Battle Over Autonomous Weapons

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Anthropic gives the middle finger to the Department of Defense. wasn’t gonna middle finger to you. I was imitating Anthropic giving the middle finger to the Department of Defense. Yeah, the fight between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon. boy. And it’s all over the Department of Defense plans to use the company’s models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

The Pentagon has already taken steps to blacklist Anthropic and its industry-leading AI model, Claude, as punishment for the firm’s refusal to give in to the administration’s demands. The Trump administration has threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to allow the military to deploy Claude as it sees fit. Can the CEO, Dario Amodi,

a released statement rejecting the Pentagon’s plans after a back and forth, which was tough negotiations. It says the threats do not change our position. cannot in good conscience, accede to their request. It’s department’s prerogative to select contractors, most aligned with their vision, but given the substantial value that Anthropics technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.

our strong preference is to continue to serve the department and our war fighters with our two requested safeguards in place. Again, what were their two safeguards? Mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Now, I’m sorry, and again, this pod, I guarantee I’m gonna get all.

I’m of hate emails. Guaranteed I’m get all sorts of hate emails. How to give our fighters what they need.

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this guy, this guy could make a fricking fortune. Okay. You’re talking, you’re talking Saudi U S government, the FARC department of defense contract money. Okay. And then old E trade commercial money coming out the wazoo. This is money coming out the wazoo. And he said, no.

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First, I don’t think that he feels, from the looks of things and from what I’ve read and looked into, that their software is ready for fully autonomous weapons. It’s not ready, which scares him a little bit.

scares them. It was a, it was actually was interesting. It was a, I think it was Andrew Alstork made this point today. It made a lot of sense. If you’re a car company and you’ve got some great new technology that’s coming out, some super brand new flying car, whatever it may be, it’s going to be the greatest thing going whatever, but it’s not ready. And guess what? It’s your stuff. You know, it’s not ready, but you are being pressured to get it out.

You’re being pressured to get it out when you know that it’s not ready and people could get hurt. Bad things could happen.

And people are coming down on this guy. Mass surveillance. Listen, OK, we went over this. I want go back to 2010. I mean, everybody remember Snowden, Julian Assange? Yeah, your government was. Spying on you, spying on everybody for crying out loud, Patriot Act, oh, we’re keeping us safe. It was safe. I remember freaking.

Sean Hannity with his freaking pom poms and skirt applauding all that crap. You he wears a CIA pin on air. Yeah, yeah, I would be a little bit nervous about that without a doubt. Think about this in regards to pop culture.

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I saw it reminded me, it was a great 1980s movie with Val Kilmer, the late great Val Kilmer, it’s called Real Genius, where this college professor, college professor’s got this kid’s super smart kids working on a laser, and the kids figure out that that laser is gonna be used to target people from space and kill them. It’s actually a pretty good movie.

And then it’s even the movie Iron Man for crying out Iron Man two married the government wanted to take over the Iron Man suit and Tony Stark’s basically like, no, no, no, no, you’re not. You’re not taking it.

I gave you my thoughts. Okay, I have. Would I have positive, do I trust? I’m being honest with you, I don’t. Do you think I like? I like saying this? Do you think I enjoy saying that I don’t trust the Pentagon, I don’t trust Department of Defense?

how can, again, if you’re younger, you might understand, but you know, we’ve been perpetually lied to our entire lives. It’s just one lie after another lie after another lie after another lie for crying out loud. And they got their little buddies out there lying for them.

Lying for them and they put out little bites to the people that are on their payroll and Mark Levin, Mark Levin yesterday or two days ago on his podcast telling people that Iran has ICBMs pointed at the United States. No, they don’t. They don’t have ICBMs. I can go on and on and on, yellow cake, all sorts of stuff. One lie after another lie, they be before I’m born. All the lies in regards to Vietnam. I don’t.

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trust them nor should you. Trust is earned. I’m not just going to give my trust. I can’t.

I can’t, I can’t right now because again, I voted for somebody that told me that we weren’t going to war.

We were anyway, he put in there was no reason to go for war and I ran he said it again again again.

So I get it. I do. And I know this might be off-putting to somebody, but I’m sorry if I developed a technology, am I gonna hand that technology over to, know, I know we live in a country, but you know, I’m sorry. Something comes above country. It does, okay? That’s your moral code.

and doing the right thing, it’s God. I’m not gonna reject my moral code of what I believe in and I’m gonna do what’s wrong because the country tells me to. No.

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No, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna do that.

I’ll leave you with this. Can a little pop culture thing popped into my head with this story? Phenomenal movie, Goodwill Hunting. Will Hunting is doing interviews so smart, various different people want him because he’s the one of most brilliant people going and he’s doing an interview with the NSA. Well, he says, he says, well, why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? That’s a tough one.

But I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at the NSA, somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself because I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa, in the Middle East. Once they had that location, they bombed the village where the rebels were hiding and 1,500 people I never met.

never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are saying, send in the Marines to secure the area because they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there getting shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie taking shrapnel in his ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from.

and the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, because he’ll work for 15 cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course, the oil companies use the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices, cute little ancillary benefit for them. But I ain’t helping my buddy at $2.50 a gallon.

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And they’re taking the sweet time bringing the oil back, of course, and maybe even that took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and blank in place slalom with the icebergs. And it ain’t too long till he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work. He can’t afford to drive and he’s got to work to the blank and job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass has given him chronic hemorrhoids.

And meanwhile, he’s starving because every time he tries to get the bite to eat, the only blue plate special they’re serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holding out for something better. I figure blanket. While I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

great bit from GoodWheel Hunting Watchdog on wallstreet.com.