Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 week agoCrossing off mass surveillance and automated killing isn’t everything they could have taken a moral stand on. Personally I don’t think any list will be long enough for the Pentagon, and if it were, there wouldn’t be anything left that could be worked on.
But I keep hearing you say that no mass surveillance and no automated killings is so very little - almost nothing. That doesn’t seem right to me. I think those are both pretty big things. I’m not horrified that their moral stance would include only that.
revolutionaryvole@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That’s a fair stance to take and I definitely do not mean to try to have you change your opinion. I also do not know if you are an American, and I don’t want to assume either way.
But, to better explain my own position, I need to point out:
Anthropic is not saying “no mass surveillance”, they are saying “no mass surveillance of Americans”. If you judge this stance based on effect, it literally makes no difference at all if you are not a US citizen, you are targeted either way. If you judge it based on principles, it can be argued it is even less moral than accepting mass surveillance of everyone - not only are they claiming that billions of innocent people deserve to lose their right to privacy, but they are specifically carving out an exception for themselves based on nationality.
They are also not saying “no automated killings”, but “no automated killings at this time because we haven’t ironed out the kinks yet”. This can be framed as a moral stance relating to safety concerns, so I will assume in good faith that this is their reasoning rather than fear of bad publicity. However, I would argue that it is still an insignificant difference, as the threat posed to humanity by a powerful warmongering state commanding an army of fully autonomous killing machines is already too great. Making sure the technology is ready could mean working on avoiding a Terminator scenario, but without a doubt it will also mean ensuring that the murderbots WILL obey an order to bomb striking workers or displaced refugees so long as the right Executive Order was signed first, something that a human being in the loop might have prevented.
These two red lines seem to make a world of moral difference for someone who already takes it for granted that the USA and its military are overall institutions deserving of trust and support, perhaps with the small exception of the current Secretary of War who may have jumped the gun a bit during negotiations over a new technology. At the very least, that seems to be the position of the author of this letter. But no state should ever be given that amount of trust and support. And particularly given the USA’s belligerence over the years and its current slide towards outright fascism, I am horrified that the bar is this low.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Better to be skeptical about everyone here, and there are certainly no heroes.
However it should be obvious that a country’s department of war surveilling its own citizens is a completely inappropriate overreach. They exist to protect the country from outside threats. You’re casting it as some kind of discrimination, and claiming it would be more moral to treat everyone the same, but that seems willfully obtuse to me. Calling it a “special carve out” for a country to protect its own citizens… come on. Obviously since you are not an American it does nothing for you but you are working way too hard to spin that up into a sin.
revolutionaryvole@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Obviously a country spying on its citizens is unacceptable overreach, I never claimed otherwise. And if my own government was conducting mass surveillance on me I would be particularly furious at the betrayal. But I would also not support it conducting surveillance on foreigners either. That is the “sin” Anthropic is guilty of, in my eyes.
Mass surveillance is simply immoral. It is targeting innocent people who have not even been accused of any crime and robbing them of their right to privacy. It is also giving states absolute leverage to harm, blackmail or manipulate anyone they want at will.
The argument that it is all done in the name of protecting its own citizens also falls flat in this case, as that is exactly the same excuse used for mass domestic surveillance - everyone loses their privacy, but the good, law-abiding citizens are protected from the criminal elements who would threaten them. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
Let’s not kid ourselves, this is not about protecting anyone. They plan to spy not only on their “enemies” but also on their closest allies, as they have in the past. This is about gaining power. And states in general already have far too much power over individuals.
Kowtowing to the Department of War and offering to sell them an AI for mass surveillance is not OK, even if it truly were to limit itself to the common, genteel use case of spying on foreign people.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m hardly going to defend the Pentagon, but to say a country should not even have an intelligence operation whatsoever, that this isn’t elementary to protecting its citizenry, is beyond naive and unrealistic.