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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Anthropic Public Benefit Corporation, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, has been designated a “supply chain risk to national security” by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n
The backstory:<\/p>\n
The conflict between the Department of Defense and Anthropic centers on the military’s demand for unrestricted access to Anthropic’s artificial intelligence system, nicknamed Claude.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthropic, based in San Francisco, was formed as a Public Benefit Corporation which must be committed to the responsible development of AI.<\/p>\n
Dig deeper:<\/p>\n
Anthropic is refusing to allow the government to use their system for creating and operating autonomous weapons, as well as for mass surveillance of Americans.<\/p>\n
Ann Skeet, Senior Director of the University of Santa Clara’s Center for Applied Ethics, said Anthropic claims Claude has a built-in directive to make ethical decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think what [they’re] saying is that the models are not capable enough right now to support those uses safely, particularly the autonomous weapons. I think that’s what the company is trying to say: can we just slow down and make sure we’re doing the right thing here?” Skeet said.<\/p>\n
However, that hesitation has prompted Hegseth to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk to the government, a status usually aimed at companies of foreign adversaries.<\/p>\n
The designation blacklists Anthropic from the entire U.S. defense system and likely, the broader federal government.<\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
Long-time tech expert Larry Magid said Anthropic is doing what it should.<\/p>\n
“If you have a product capable, even if it is unlikely, but capable of doing enormous harm, you don’t want to put that product into a situation where it can do that harm,” Magid said.<\/p>\n
AI is far from perfect or always correct, and Magid said extra caution must be taken when applying the technology to weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Anybody who knows anything about AI knows that once you essentially put a gun in its hands, you run the risk that it might shoot that gun and that there is a possibility that it could make a mistake,” said Magid.<\/p>\n
Additionally, mass surveillance \u2013 which is useful in military conflict zones \u2013 could be highly intrusive in American society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t want technology used by a federal government to have mass surveillance on American citizens,” said Representative Ro Khanna (D-Santa Clara).<\/p>\n
Though Anthropic has some months to disengage with the U.S. government, intermediaries are trying to settle the differences between the two parties.<\/p>\n
The Source: Original reporting by Tom Vacar of KTVU<\/p>\n
Technology<\/a>San Francisco<\/a>President<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, D.C. – Anthropic Public Benefit Corporation, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, has been designated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[81247,1184,100,6283,101,103,102,104,106,105,1970,1181],"class_list":{"0":"post-198585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-2020-election","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-president","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}