America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice
Source: Hacker News
America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice.
Call your Senators and Representatives, right now.
As I wrote yesterday, Anthropic’s showdown with the U.S. Department of Defense may literally be life or death for all of us. If Pete Hegseth forces Dario Amodei to fold, not one but two monstrous precedents will be set.
First precedent (obvious and terrible).
Secretary Hegseth is demanding, backed by heavy threats, that the U.S. military have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI software for applications such as military surveillance and autonomous weapons without humans in the loop. This could well extend to nuclear weapons.1
Nothing I have read convinces me that Secretary Hegseth has a nuanced understanding of the strengths and limits of current AI, or that he will show restraint in how he applies it. Rather, he appears to be trying to define his career around deploying AI as broadly and as quickly as possible.
Second precedent (subtle but no less important).
Hegseth’s maneuver is an audacious power grab that aims to circumvent Congress. By setting a deadline of 5:01 PM Eastern tomorrow, he aims to cut everybody else—including Congress—out of the loop.
A reader of this newsletter, a tech writer who describes himself as a political independent, wrote to me, rightly panicked:
Today the Pentagon will force Anthropic to change its corporate goal of responsible AI. This is not something to be decided in the marketplace by a bully with deep pockets; it must be decided in Congress. Senators and Representatives must take a position and deliberate in public about whether it is OK to use AI for surveillance of Americans and to launch lethal strikes controlled by AI with no “human in the loop”. Please say something today, before Amodei has to surrender.
He is right.
Please call or write your Senators and Representatives now.
AI policy of this magnitude should involve the American people. Congress must deliberate. Mass surveillance and AI‑fueled weapons—possibly nuclear—without humans in the loop are categorically not decisions that a single individual, even a Cabinet member, should make at gunpoint.
That is exactly where we are headed.
Footnotes
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Hegseth’s demand would, in principle, extend to applying Anthropic’s software to nuclear weapons without humans in the loop. For context, S. 1394 – Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023 failed to pass, meaning we might not have a modern “Stanislav Petrov” to avert disaster. ↩