I think what you are missing is their annual comp with two commas in it.
https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
Don't get distracted
You underestimate how many top AI scientists are perfectly okay with building autonomous weapons systems and are not ashamed of it.
Me, and 99% of HN readers, will gladly pull the trigger to release a missile from a drone if we are paid even just US$1,000,000/year.
Now note that many L7+ at OpenAI are making $10 million+ per year.
I sincerely doubt that's true. I hope it's not. $1m is a lot of money, but I find it hard to believe most people would be willing to indiscriminately kill a large number of people for it.
> Me, and 99% of HN readers, will gladly pull the trigger to release a missile from a drone if we are paid even just US$1,000,000/year.
Another point completely unrelated to my previous story: Since the advent of pretty good LLMs starting in 2023, when I watch flims with warfare set in the future, it makes absolutely no sense that soldiers are still manually aiming. I'm not saying it will be like Terminator 2 right away, but surely the 19-22 year old operator will just point the weapon in the general direction of the target, then AI will handle the rest. And yet, we still see people manually aiming and shooting in these scenarios. Am I the only one who cringes when I see this? There is something uncanney valley about it, like seeing a character in a film using a flip phone post-2015! Maybe directors don't want to show us the ugly truth of the future of warfare.
Other universes take it further - Warhammer 40k often features combatants fighting with melee weapons. Rule of cool and all that.
A better way is to say you can always find a cheap sellout at least than the morally dammed cannot claim equality of belief
Shit, I wonder if I still have any of those ‘tres commas club’ t-shirts lying around?
Whether Anthropic’s clear mistreatment means that all other companies should refrain from doing business with the US government isn’t as clear to me. I can see arguments on both sides and I acknowledge it’s probably impossible to eliminate all possible bias within myself.
One thing I hope we can agree on is that it would be good if the contract (or its relevant portions) is made public so that people can judge for themselves, without having to speculate about who’s being honest and who’s lying.
That isn't what many of us are challenging here. We're not concerned about OpenAI's ethics because they agreed to work with the government after Anthropic was mistreated.
We're skeptical because it seems unlikely that those restrictions were such a third rail for the government that Anthropic got sanctioned for asking for them, but then the government immediately turned around and voluntarily gave those same restrictions to OpenAI. It's just tough to believe the government would concede so much ground on this deal so quickly. It's easier to believe that one company was willing to agree to a deal that the other company wasn't.
Well… TACO.
But we all know how OpenAI is desperate for money, its the weakest link in the bubble quite frankly burning Billions and failed at Sora and there isn't much moat as well economically.
DOD giving them billions for a deal feels like a huge carrot on the stick and wink wink (let's have autonomous killing machines) with the skepticism that you, me or perhaps most people of the community would share.
I for what its worth, don't appreciate Anthropic in its whole (I do still remember perhaps the week old thread where everyone pushed on Anthropic for trying to see user data through API when they looked at the chinese models whole thing) but I give credit where its due and Enemy of my Enemy is my friend, and at the moment it seems that OpenAI might be more friendlier to DOD who wishes to create autonomous killing machine and mass surveillance systems which is like Sci-fi level dystopia rather than anthropic.
Until they volunteer evidence that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, you can honestly say that you haven't seen any. What a convenient position!
You're conflating the Trump administration and their fascist tendencies with all US government. You want to work for fascists if you get paid well enough. You can admit that on here.
"we will comply with US law" The problem is, the US government does not actually comply with US law.
My point was I don't think that Money (whether from VC or taking Jobs from other massive AI employers) should be as important issue to them atleast imo.
1. Department of War broadly uses Anthropic for general purposes
2. Minority interests in the Department of War would like to apply it to mass surveillance and/or autonomous weapons
3. Anthropic disagrees and it escalates
4. Anthropic goes public criticizing the whole Department of War
5. Trump sees a political reason to make an example of Anthropic and bans them
6. The entirety of the Department of War now has no AI for anything
7. Department of War makes agreement with another organization
If there was only a minority interest at the department of war to develop mass surveillance / autonomous weapons or it was seen as an unproven use case / unknown value compared to the more proven value from the rest of their organizational use of it, it would make sense that they'd be 1) in practice willing to agree to compromise on this, 2) now unable to do so with Anthropic in specific because of the political kerfuffle.
I imagine they'd rather not compromise, but if none of the AI companies are going to offer them it then there's only so much you can do as a short term strategy.
Like, they haven't paid me a bribe? That seems to be the only "politics" at play in Trumps head.
But man, this blew up pretty fast for a miss-understanding in some negotiation. Something must have been said in those meetings to make anthropic go public.
One of them needs to be investigated for corruption in the next few years. I’d have to assume anyone senior at OpenAI is negotiating indemnities for this.
Never discount the possibility of Hegseth being petty and doing the OpenAI deal with the same terms to imply to the world that Anthropic is being unreasonable because another company signed a deal with him.
This one is very easy. Trump has a well established pattern of making a loud statement to make it appear he didn't lose, even when he did.
https://x.com/sama/status/1876780763653263770
If so, I believe the lawsuit is still going on. I'm personally withholding judgment on him on this matter since I don't know the details.
But it's easy to criticize and judge him on other stuff he's said in public.
openai can deploy safety systems of their own making
from the military perspective this is preferable because they just use the tool -- if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, they'll use another one. with the anthropic model the military needs a legal opinion before they can use the tool, or they might misuse it by accident
this is also preferable if you think the government is untrustworthy. an untrustworthy government may not obey the contract, but they will have a hard time subverting safety systems that openai builds or trains into the model
- When has any AI company shipped "safeguards" that aren't trivially bypassed by mid bloggers? Just one example would be fine.
- The conventional wisdom is that OAI's R&D (including safety) is significantly behind Anthropic's.
- OpenAI is constantly starved for funding. They don't make money. They have every incentive to say yes to a deal that entrenches them into govt systems, regardless of the externalities
Speaking to people's better angels as if it has a chance of influencing Trumps behaviour is a fool's errand. It's not derangement. His word is worthless.