501
Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks
(www.anthropic.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
501 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
81933 readers
2904 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How is a private company the voice of reason in this?
What a company says and what a company actually does are not the same thing.
They're not. Conscience has nothing to do with this.
They just don't think the PR hit is worth it.
Whenever companies choose to act in a way that we perceive as good, we were the voice of reason, not them.
Because America elected unreasonable leaders.
While I'm glad they're drawing a line, they're only splitting hairs. Anthropic is already deeply working with the US gov.
Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI employees who left largely due to ethical and safety concerns about how OpenAI was being run. This is just them sticking to their principles.
I'm not so sure about that one.
AI company Anthropic amends core safety principle amid growing competition in sector
AI safety leader says 'world is in peril' and quits to study poetry
I still think they deserve some credit for at least trying to do the right thing. I don't envy the position they're in.
Everyone's rushing toward AGI. Trying to do it safely is meaningless if your competition - the ones who don't care about safety - gets there first. You can slow things down if you're in the lead, but if you're second best, it's just posturing. There is no second place in this race.
No AI bro company is on the path to AGI. Transformer technology will not lead to AGI.
I never claimed it will.
"Right thing": compromising with authoritarian regimes to secure AI funding
Anthropic's "ethical" concerns were performative. They only fearmonger about fictional things that will make their product sound powerful (read: worth throwing money into).
They try to scare people with fictional stories of AGI, a thing that isn't happening, while ignoring widespread CSAM and sexual harassment generation, a thing that is happening.
Are we not moving toward AGI? Because from where I stand, I only see three scenarios: either AI research is going backwards, no progress is being made whatsoever, or we're continuing to improve our systems incrementally - inevitably moving toward AGI. Unless, ofcourse, you think we'll never going to reach it which I view as a quite insane claim in itself.
If we're not moving toward it, then I'd love to hear your explanation for why we're moving backwards or not making any progress at all.
Whether we're 5 or 500 years away from AGI is completely irrelevant to the people who worry about it. It's not the speed of the progress - it's the trajectory of it.
We are not "moving towards AGI" in any way with any modern technology, in the same way that we are not "moving towards FTL travel" because a car company added cylinders to an engine.
The real "AI" dangers are people like Eli Yudkowski, a man who scares vulnerable people, sexually abuses them, and has spawned at least one murderous cult.
Dario is one of the biggest AGI bullshit peddlers.
So that means you believe AI research is completely frozen still or moving backwards. Please explain.
Comparisons to faster-than-light travel are completely disingenuous and bad faith - that would break the laws of physics and you know it.
You can also keep your red herrings to yourself. I'm discussing ideas here - not people.
According to Dario Amodei, this is the year we are getting New Science. And apparently he believes in Dyson Spheres too. How do we feel about that?
Anthropic is not special. They're doing the LLM thing like everybody else. The Godfather of AI, Yann LeCun himself, said LLMs were a dead end on this front. But even if he didn't chime in, it's your job to show they'll lead to AGI, it's your job to show us how, not my job to show you it won't.
If you're just gonna keep ignoring every single point I make and keep rambling about unrelated shit, then there's nothing left to discuss here. If you actually had an argument, you would've made it by now.
Your claim: AI seems to be getting better, therefore AGI will happen
My rebuttal: they aren't linked
Other important things you must reconcile with: the sexual abuse, the death toll, etc from the True Believers
Does that clear matters up?
My argument is that we'll incrementally keep improving our technology like we have done throughout human history. Assuming that general intelligence is not substrate dependent - meaning that what our brains are doing cannot be replicated in silicon - or that we destroy ourselves before we get there, then it's just a matter of time before we create a system that's as intelligent as we are: AGI.
I already said that the timescale doesn't matter here. It could take a hundred years or two thousand - doesn't matter. We're still moving toward it. It does not matter how slow you move. As long as you keep moving, you'll eventually reach your destination.
So, how I see it is that if we never end up creating AGI ever, it's either because we destroyed ourselves before we got there or there's something borderline supernatural about the human brain that makes it impossible to copy in silicon.
So do you think Dyson Spheres are inevitable too? Because things advance?
You're also shifting your goalposts tremendously. First you were implying that today's AI would bring about AGI and now you're saying that something, somewhere, might happen in some sci-fi future.
I'm not sure if you're actually worried about present day destruction, though, because you seemed to not like it when I brought up with the AGI true believers are doing to the vulnerable people that flock to them. Dario is on board with Trump's fossil fuel, anti-green buildout too.
If you believe so much in AI, but allegedly believe in the things you've talked about, perhaps it's time to start criticizing the people you hold so dear.
I'm less certain about that than I am about AGI - there may be other ways to produce that same amount of energy with less effort - but generally speaking, yeah, it seems highly probable to me.
I've never made such a claim. I've been saying the exact same thing since around 2016 or so - long before LLMs were even a thing. It's in no way obvious to me that LLMs are the path to AGI. They could be, but they don't have to be. Either way, it doesn't change my core argument.
C'moon now.
You really aren't beating the Yudkowsky/LessWrong allegations with this one, you know.
If you really think LLMs might mean nothing at all when it comes to actually achieving AGI, then maybe you should speak out against the environmental destruction they're doing today with full endorsement from Anthropic and all the other corporate AI perverts.
That doesn't have anything to do with my claim about the inevitability of AGI.
It is everything to do with your claim about its inevitability, because we're witnessing real life in the present day, not some fantasy prediction of the future. If people like Dario and Eli get their way, there will be no future to get AGI.
... I am growing increasingly concerned you really are a Yudkowskist rationalist
You don't seem very interested in sticking to the topic, do you? This conversation has been all over the place, complete with ad-hominems, concern-trolling, red herrings, strawmen, gish galloping - as if you're trying to break some kind of record.
It's pretty clear you've built up a cartoon-villain version of me in your head and now you're fighting that imagined version like it's real. I made a pretty simple claim about AGI, you've piled an entire story on top of it, and now you're demanding I defend views I don't even hold.
I've been trying to have a good-faith conversation here, but if this is what you're going to keep doing, then I'll just move on.
The topic of...LLMs? Because that's what this thread is. If you come in here and you start talking about something that's entirely unrelated to LLMs (what was that about red herrings?) I'll point it out.
And if it's based on Yudkowskism, all the more reason to call it out. You're aware of the sexual abuse and death Eli Yudkowski is either directly or indirectly responsible for, right?
...because every now and again, for the briefest of moments, one them shows themselves not to be run by entirely evil, lecherous humps?
Blink and you (or the shareholders) might miss it.
Don't buy the hype. They're not acting in good conscience, they've just weighed the pros and cons and decided that the PR hit isn't worth it.
I can dream, Harold!
Having said that...let's see how it shakes out. Sometimes, good things happen for good reasons.
When a CEO tells you who he is, believe him the first time.
I thought we had all learned this lesson with Elon Musk, who also pretended to be the good guy. We've already got a ton of red flags about Dario Amodei.