Open ai, the former non-profit, whose board tried to fire the CEO for being deceptive, which is no longer open at all, isn't exactly about ethics these days.

Even on a personal level: OpenAI has changed it's privacy policy twice to let them gather data on me they weren't before. A lot of steps to disable it each time, tons of dark patterns. And the data checkout just bugs out too, it's a fake feature to hide how much they are using everything you type to them

This is exactly what it says: the only restrictions are the restrictions that are already in law. This seems like the weasel language Dario was talking about.

People often overlook how all the NSA-related activities and government overreach come with a nice memo from officials stating how "lawful" the questionable actions they're taking are.

> For example, I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including, e.g., granular location and financial transaction data - and apply OpenAI's tools to that data to surveil and otherwise target US citizens at scale.

Third Party Doctrine makes trouble for us once again.

Eliminate that and MANY nightmare scenarios disappear or become exceptionally more complicated.

You are exactly correct and this is what Dario has been speaking up about.

He calls this exact scenario out in last night's interview: https://youtu.be/MPTNHrq_4LU

This is hilarious. I see their lawyers got together to find the most confusing way they could word it to throw people off and let everybody claim it says whatever's best for their own PR.

"Shall not be used as consistent with these authorities"?

So they shall only be used inconsistently with these authorities? That's the literal reading if you assume there's no typo.

Or did they forget a crucial comma that would imply they shall not use it, to the extent this provision is consistent with their authorities?

Or did they forget the comma but it was supposed to mean that they shall not use it, to the extent that not-doing so would be consistent with their authorities?

You gotta hand it to the lawyers, I'm not sure I could've thought of wording this deliberately confusing if they'd given me a million dollars.

Even worse is the kill-bot policy. The eventual-human-in-the-loop clause. aka as yolo mode or --dangerously-skip-permissions

Imagine arming chatgpt and letting it pick targets and launch missiles from clawdbot.

Previously Snowden leaked that the NSA and FBI accessed data directly from major U.S. internet companies. Now we have generative AI that can help identify targets much faster. IMO the government is amoral and interested in getting the best technology available, and integrating it into their systems. So the CEO etc can say one thing, and will do another.

Other nations including Israel and the PRC will also be working with their own implementations respectively because if they are not they know that everyone else is. So this is just basic game theory.

But the kicker is that 5y from now we will be able to run Codex 5.3x or Opus 4.6 on a $5000 mac studio, so nations states will want to immediately implement this kind of technology into their defense apparatus.

thanks for speaking out, and yes, that was my interpretation, as well, which I outlined below. This is nothing more than some sugar coating on "lawful use" despite what OpenAI says and the contractual "safeguards" they tout like the FDEs.

Surely this is the main issue - Doge and others have assembled massive databases of information about all Americans from across the government and now they want to use AI to start making lists.

DoD* - the Department of Defense was named through statute, and only the Congress has the power to change it.

As a non-US person I take absolutely no solace in sama's statement (even if I believed a single word that snake has ever uttered, which I do not).

i.e. Combing through public forums on the internet looking for evidence of thought crime, however, is fair game. The Trump admin will undoubtedly use tools like this to compile a list political enemies or undesirables, which they will then use to harass people or selectively restrict individual rights. They're already doing this and this is just going to make it easier for them.

  > to the extent that that surveillance is already prohibited by law.

The problem with government contracts where you say "can't do anything illegal" is that THEY DECIDE WHAT IS LEGAL. We're lucky we live in a system where you can challenge the government but I think either side of the isle you're on you think people are trying to dismantle that feature (we just disagree on who is doing that, right?).

<edit>

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT DARIO WAS ARGUING and it is exactly why the DOD wanted to get around. They wanted to use Claude for all legal purposes and Anthropic said moral reasons.

Also notice the subtle language in OpenAI's red lines. "No use of OpenAI technology for mass *domestic* surveillance." We've seen how this was abused by the NSA already since normal communication in the Internet often crosses international lines. And what they couldn't get done that way they got around through allies who can spy on American citizens.

</edit>

I think we need to remember that legality != morality. It's our attempt to formalize morality but I think everyone sees how easy it is to skirt[0]

  > I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including

Call your senators. There's a bill in the senate explicitly about this. Here's the EFF's take [1]. IMO it's far from perfect but an important step. I think we should talk about this more. I have problems with it too, but hey, is anything in here preventing things from continuing to get better? It's too easy to critique and then do nothing. We've been arguing for over a decade, I'd rather take a small step than a step back.

  > If I'm right, this is abhorrent.

Let's also not forget WorldCoin[2]. World (blockchain)? World Network?

I have no trust for Altman. His solution to distinguishing humans from bots is mass biometric surveillance. This seems as disconnected as the CEO of Flock or that Ring commercial.

Not to mention all the safety failures. Sora was released allowing real people to be generated? Great marketing. Glad they "fixed it" so quickly...

There's a lot happening now and it's happening fast. I think we need to be careful. We've developed systems to distribute power but it naturally wants to accumulate. Be it government power or email providers. The greater the power, the greater the responsibility. But isn't that why we created distributed power systems in the first place?

Personally I don't want autonomous unquestioning killbots under the control of one or a small number of people. Even if you don't believe the one in control now is not a psychopath (-_-) then you can still agree that it's possible for that type of person to get control. Power corrupts. Things like killing another person should be hard, emotionally. That's a feature, not a flaw. Soldiers questioning orders is a feature, not a flaw. By concentrating power you risk handing that power to those that do not feel. We're making Turnkey Tyranny more dangerous

[0] and law is probably our best attempt to make a formal system out of a natural language but I digress

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/fourth-amendment-not-s...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)

Bingo.

Wait, one of those contracts says you may not build the Terminator.

The other says you may build the Terminator if the DOD lawyers say it’s okay.

This is a major distinction.

Can their solution recommend to shoot at combatants lost at sea?

This is key because it's the textbook example of a war crime. It's also something that the current administration has bragged doing dozens of times.

More succinctly: who decides what is legal here? OpenAI, the Secretary of Defense, or a judge?

  > More succinctly: who decides what is legal here?

  | The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols.

  - legal
  - operational requirements
  - "well-established safety and oversight protocols"

  > who decides what is [consistent with operational requirements] here?

The language allows for the DoD to use the model for anything that they deem legal. Read it carefully.

It begins “The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes…” and at no point does it limit that. Rather, it describes what the DOW considers lawful today, and allows them to change the regulations.

As Dario said, it’s weasel legal language, and this administration is the master of taking liberties with legalese, like killing civilians on boats, sending troops to cities, seizing state ballots, deporting immigrants for speech, etc etc etc.

Sam Altman is either a fool, or he thinks the rest of us are.

The word "legal" is doing all of the heavy lifting. Considering the countless adjudicated illegal things that the government is doing publicly. What happens behind classified closed doors?

I guess you can consider it a moral stance that if the government constantly does illegal things you wouldn't trust them to follow the law.

I know that's not what Anthropic said but that's the gist I'm getting.

That language is not consistent with:

> No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems

No, this very devious and insidious. What the executive branch believes is legal is the real agreement here. Trump can say anything is legal and that's that. There is no judicial overview, there are no lawyers defending the rights of those who are being harmed. Trump can tell the pentagon "everyone in minnesota is a potential insurrectionist, do mass surveillance on them under the patriot act and the insurrection act".

Mass surveillance doesn't require a warrant, that's why they want it, that's why it's "mass". warrants mean judicial overview. Anthropic didn't disagree with surveillance where a court (even a FISA court!!) issued a warrant. Trump just doesn't want to go through even a FISA court.

This is pure evil from Sam Altman.

Is anyone listing these peoples names somewhere for posterity's sake? I'd hate to think this would all be forgotten. From Altman to Zuckerberg, if justice prevails they'll be on the receiving end of retribution.

And who decides what's legal? The US was collecting illegal tariff revenue for ten months. Does OpenAI need to wait for the Supreme Court to strike down autonomous killbots?

> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products.

What if Anthropic's morals are "we won't sell someone a product for something that it's not realistically capable of doing with a high degree of success? The government can't do what something if it's literally impossible (e.g. "safe" backdoors in encryption), but it's legal for them to attempt even when failure is predetermined. We don't know that's what's going on here, but you haven't provided any evidence that's sufficient to differentiate between those scenarios, so it's fairly misleading to phrase it as fact rather than conjecture.

Does the US have any laws that require human control of autonomous weapons? Isn’t that a contradiction?

Didn't fully follow the saga, but isn't their "imposing their own morals" is that "we do not want to allow you to let our AI go on an unsupervised killing spree"?

The United States Military, in its official capacity, has been performing illegal, extrajudicial assassinations of civilians in international waters for months now.

We have been sharing technology and weapons with Israel while it prosecutes a genocide in contravention of both US and International law.

We are currently prosecuting a war on Iran that is illegal under both US and International law.

Any aid given to such a force is to underwrite that lawlessness and it shows a reckless disregard for the very notion of a 'nation of laws'.

When OpenAI says, 'The Military can do what is legal', full in the knowledge that this military has no interest in even pretextual legality, one has to wonder why you hold that you 'agree with' both of these decisions.

Do you believe the flimsiest of lies in other aspects of your life?

Even if the autonomous weapon systems ‘perform as intended’, this does not in any way mean that they are not an enormous danger.

Secondly, as that is department policy and not a law or regulation, they appear to be saying that the cited directive is presently the only thing standing between the DOD and the use of autonomous weapons.

If that’s the case how hard is it to change or alter a directive?

> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products.

Excuse me, but what a fucked up perspective. "Impose its own morals into the use of its products"? What happened to "We give each other the freedom to hold beliefs and act accordingly unless it does harm"? How on earth did it come to something where the framing is that anyone is "imposing" anything on another simply by not providing services or a product that fits somebody else's need? That sounds like you're buying into the reversed victim and offender narrative.

And this is not about whether one agrees with their beliefs. It is about giving others the right to have their own.

> OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that it claims is legal.

FTFY. The administration threw a fit and tried to retroactively demote a retired military officer for making a video saying, "Troops, you should disobey unlawful orders". Over 4000 times has been told, "No, that's not what the law regarding detaining undocumented aliens means", and continues doing it. Their first response to the Supreme Court saying, "the President can't impose tarriffs" was "The Hell I can't!".

It's 100% clear that Trump thinks "what the law allows" and "what I want to do" are the same thing.

Rule of law requires that the majority of people in the system are committed to the rule of law, and refuse to go along with violations of it. Anthropic is being a good citizen here; OpenAI is not.

My interpretation of the difference is more like: Anthropic wanted the synchronous real-time authority to say "No we wont do that" (e.g. by modifying system prompts, training data, Anthropic people in the loop with shutdown authority). OpenAI instead asked for the asynchronous authority to re-evaluate the contract if it is breached (e.g. the DoD can use OpenAI tech for domestic surveillance, but there's a path to contract and service termination if they do this).

If my read is correct: I personally agree with the DoD that Anthropic's demands were not something any military should agree to. However, as you say, the DoD's reaction to Anthropic's terms is wildly inappropriate and materially harmed our military by forcing all private companies to re-evaluate whether selling to the military is a good idea going forward.

The DoD likely spends somewhere on the order of ~$100M/year with Google; but Google owns a 14% stake in Anthropic, who spends at least that much if not more on training and inference. All-in-all, that relationship is worth on the order of ~$10B+. If Google is put into the position of having to decide between servicing DoD contracts or maintaining Anthropic as an investee and customer, its not trivially obvious that they'd pick the DoD unless forced to with behind-the-scenes threats and the DPA. Amazon is in a similar situation; its only Microsoft that has contracts large enough with the DoD where their decision is obvious. Hegseth's decision leaves the DoD, our military, and our defense materially weaker by both refusing federal access to state of the art technology, and creating a schism in the broader tech ecosystem where many players will now refuse to engage with the government.

Either party could have walked away from negotiations if they were unhappy with the terms. Alternatively: the DoD should have agreed to Anthropic's red lines, then constrained/compartmentalized their usage of Anthropic's technology to a clearly limited and non-combat capacity until re-negotiation and expansion of the deal could happen. Instead, we get where we're at, which is not good.

IMO: I know a lot of people are scared of a fascist-like future for the US, but personally I'm more fearful of a different outcome. Our government and military has lost all of its capacity to manufacture and innovate. Its been conceded to private industry, and its at the point where private industry has grown so large that companies can seriously say "ok, we won't work with you, bye" and it just be, like, fine for their bottom line. The US cannot grow federal spending and cannot find a reasonable path to taxing or otherwise slowing down the rise of private industry. We're not headed into fascism (though there are elements of that in the current admin): We're headed into Snow Crash. The military is just a thin coordination layer of operators piecing together technology from OpenAI, Boeing, Anduril, Raytheon. Public governments everywhere are being out-competed by private industry, and in some countries it feels like industry tolerates the government, because it still has some decreasing semblance of authority, but especially in the US that semblance of authority has been on a downward trend for years. Google's revenue was 7% of the US Federal Government's revenue last year. That's fucking insane. What happens when we get to the point where Federal debt becomes unserviceable? When Google or Apple or Microsoft hit 10%, or 15%? Our government loses its ability to actually function effectively; and private industry will be there to fill the void.

Exactly, they're letting the lawless administration decide what the lawful purposes and the policies in general are.

The "human approval" will be someone clicking a YES button all the time, like Israeli officers did in the Gaza bombing.

It's a bit worse, because in the case of mass surveillance, they can't just make their own law, they need to make that law and have 2/3rds of US states sign off on a constitutional amendment.

Aiding someone while you know they're trying to break the law is conspiracy to break the law. OpenAI is culpable. You can't sue the government in many cases, but you can with OpenAI.

Are you saying we can't trust the words of a convicted fraudster?

Exactly. And not only can they make their own rules, but they can draft and enforce them effectively in secret.

It's also good to demonstrate to these companies that we're willing to move. If these companies know their entire userbase will just pack up and move at the first controversy, there wont be any controversies.

> I don't think Anthropic is a saint that will never do anything unethical. I don't think ChatGPT is any better or worse.

I sort of agree and think that over a long horizon, Open weights models are going to be the best / are the best

I do think only a fraction of companies might do what Anthropic did here. There must have been quite a significant pressure on them to fold but they didn't. So to me, I'd rather try to do atleast something to show companies that people do care about such things and its best if we have at the very least some unconditional morals which are not for sale no matter the price.

I think that we can still have disagreements with Anthropic on matters and I certainly still have some disagreements about their thoughts on Open Models for example but in all regards I would trust them as more trustworthy than OpenAI imho.

That being said, I do think that its worth telling that given that I don't have good GPU, I am gonna stop using Chatgpt as well and will use either Claude/(Kimi?) as well like many people are doing too. I do think that it might be the path going forward.

And a nice bonus is that Claude is way better than ChatGPT right now anyway

How's claude for non coding tasks? For example using it as a google substitute for trivial questions, like a recipe or a phone review.

Genuinely asking, because I might follow your steps.

> The only power you have is to quit.

This is an incredible power when exercised en-masse.

> The only power you have is to quit.

Employees often have the power to oust the owner and take over the company; and more often than that have the power to have business grind to a halt. It does take a strong union and a culture of solidarity and sticking together of course, which I doubt we would find in a place like OpenAI.

It's perhaps too late in this case, but this is what unions are for. Sam Altman + a handful of scabs can't keep the lights on at OpenAI if a critical mass of engineers refuse to work until this decision is reversed (or, even better, not made at all, since the union would be part of that process).

The OpenAI employees had the power to have Sam Altman reinstated when he was ousted by the board two years ago.

Right. If you are wealthy enough to go retire and live off interest, but STILL choose to work for a company you morally disagree with...then what sort of person are you?

seethe harder Ill cry into my money

ethically btw