"Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens
8 months ago by Lee Duna to c/technology
They probably have been working on a potential agreement with openai for a while now. They just hastily finished it in response to anthropic. But I don't know if they will keep the red lines anthropic has demanded in place
$$$
Which they badly need, they are in an incredibly risky position right now. It's very disappointing, this deal might save them from collapse for quite a while.
The only disappointment, is that Altmans head is still attached to his shoulders.
Altman is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is capitalism.
No, no, even if we get that wish I dont want the US state propping up AI longer
mainstream
I'll believe that when my sisters start saying this. Till then, it's just us privacy fans screaming in a dark cave, enjoying the echo.
It's always like this. We get a ton of articles on how everyone is suddenly boycotting/deleting [insert thing] but when you ask someone in real life, they usually have no idea what you're talking about.
The one thing I will say is that there does seem to be a generalized dislike for AI that has all the investors and upper management types nervous. Even by their own studies do people generally either not care about AI in their products or actively dislike it/find it intrusive. There was a study by a phone company from this past summer or fall that concluded that 80% of their users had no interest in AI or found that it actively made their experience worse, and there have been plenty of pretty damning reports about how useful it's been in various industries (just look at Microslop). That is not conducive to convincing investors to fund your product and does not show a viable path to making a profit in the future.
We've seen similar things happening recently with car manufacturers walking back on their big touchscreens (with some help from regulation in civilized places that care about things like "pedestrian fatalities" - like Europe) due to consumer sentiment. They tried for nearly a decade to push bigger and bigger screens into cars and remove physical buttons, and now they're moving in the other direction. Completely anecdotal evidence, but the last time I went to buy a car I told the salesman at the dealership that I wasn't interested in cars newer than a certain year because that was when they increased the size of the screen and put them in a more obnoxious spot on the dashboard, and he said that he heard similar sentiments from practically everybody who came in looking to buy a car - everybody hated the bigger screens.
I had a coworker tell me how cool Copilot was because he asked it a question and it found the answer in an email in his outlook mailbox. I thought, “you needed AI to search your email?”
We are probably cooked.
I know what you mean. It’s a pretty vague term though. You could argue that as soon as it enters the midsection of the bell curve at all, it’s “in the mainstream.” It doesn’t have to have captured a full 90% of the bell curve.
I mean it's at least accurate now, there is no defense when you are starting war with everyone
But MAGA only voted for the department of pedophiles. This is an outrage.
Especially since the Trump admin already made it clear that they don’t respect preferred pronouns. Why should we use the DoD’s preferred pronouns of Department of War instead of the Department of Defense name it legally has? DoW is just DoD’s preferred pronoun.
Yeah, there are all sorts of ways in which standing up to the administration is hard, but calling something by its actual name should be a relatively easy thing to do!
I think you're in denial. If they had changed the name of Homeland Security into the dep of National Security for example, you probably wouldn't say that media outlets is parroting the us government.
Because it's still officially called the Department of Defense; only Congress can rename it.
More broadly, it illustrates the administration's use of illegal boat strikes and regime change as foreign policy tools.
I would.
Canada recently has had its 2nd worst school shooting ever. The killer had many interactions with ChatGPT that warranted banning her account. A whistleblower has claimed that they wanted to inform Canada's police force of these comments but were denied by ChatGPT's management.
They had a chance to stop the death of 8 people, most of which were young children, but failed to do anything.
FUCK CHATGPT AND THOSE BASTARDS THAT RUN IT
Why would you not contact police? I understand that this is a systemic failure and blame does not lie with that employee but if others me I'd rather be out of a job than have those deaths on my conscience for the rest of my life.
It's probabilities. If you report it you're 100% out of a job but only maybe prevented something bad from happening. If you don't report, you keep your job but maybesomething bad happens. Reliance on a job for survival shifts the decision even further to taking the course of action that'll keep you your job.
In my eyes some blame does lie with them. A systematic failure is a failure of many parts. An employee taking notice and following bad instructions is one of them.
I don't know what information they had, but if they were at the point of intending to share, it seems like whistleblowing would have been the just and moral thing to do even if it means ignoring immediate authoritative structure.
Sam Altman is just some fail upward money guy, he's been eventually removed from basically every prior position he has held.
Seems like his career has largely been lying and making impossible promises, so. The folks who do that well always manage to exit the stage before the magic tincture is revealed to just be piss 🤷♂️
he did meet his future husband through one "THIELS party", most likely his other protege.
I cannot believe this is what it took for a boycott to go more mainstream. Tell me more about how so many people have no respect for the environment or the artists who's work they gleefully consume.
Anthropic still is scum for being completely fine helping America oppress the rest of the world.
Anthropic is scum, accepting money from foreign dictators, forcing their software on minorities while insisting it was conscious and had emotions just like them, praising the Trump administration, making up scary stories to get more funding...
...In many ways, they're worse than OpenAI. They're just running with the same playbook that Sam Altman used to use to pretend he was a good guy.
I missed when sucking up to the Trump administration and echoing Cold War style nationalism was "fair". If that's the case, OpenAI's behavior is fair.
Fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems.
Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters
Dario "Warfighter" Amodei
I missed when sucking up to the Trump administration and echoing Cold War style nationalism was “fair”. If that’s the case, OpenAI’s behavior is fair.
It's just capitalism. Anthropic pushed against the administration and now they are about to be branded as "supply chain risk". OpenAI bent over and are going to get billions in funding that they sorely need (and hopefully don't get, let them fail).
You miss the mark though: Anthropic only praised the administration, but that's just words to give the Twitter pedo in chief a pat on the head. OpenAI actually signed a contract and they are providing their service. Massive difference.
Sorry, not quite, but close. From 404 media
When users confronted Clinton with their concerns, he brushed them off, said he would not submit to mob rule, and explained that AIs have emotions and that tech firms were working to create a new form of sentience, according to Discord logs and conversations with members of the group.
Oh, that guy! To be fair, that's one employee, not Anthropic's actions or position. You mentioned forcing their software on minorities while insisting it was better than it was, and I was getting OLPC flashbacks. But Anthropic looking for funding in the UAE and Qatar is shitty. I can't seem to find anything about whether or not they went through with those contracts.
Use for "all lawful means" is quite the grey area considering no one was arrested or fired, or any law updated, for what Snowden leaked. If the NSA does it, no one will arrest the NSA.
"You're absolutely right! That was a children's hospital, not a military base. Let's try that again!"
The Department of War isn't a real thing. Its called The Department of Defense. That's not my opinion either, its officially/legally called The Department of Defense.
The fact that the Trump administration can create web sites saying whatever it pleases does not make the name change legitimate.
No. Trump declared it changed, much like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. Until there is an act of Congress changing the name, it is still the DoD, and the Kennedy Center is the Kennedy Center, and so on.
Sends a message of certainly not deserving a peace prize.
I think you missed some news. There is officially a Department of War again.
Edit: I am very wrong.
Only Congress can change the name of the Department of Defense, and not only has it not passed any legislation to do so, but the most National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed after Trump's executive order, only mentions the "Department of Defense" and never the "Department of War".
So, no, there is not officially a Department of War, there continues to only officially be a Department of Defense.
Oh, well today I learned. I had assumed that even the world's dumbest government officials wouldn't refer to themselves as being part of a department that doesn't actually exist, but here we are.
Thanks for laying it out for me!
You should also stop using Google products for similar reasons.
I just got grapheneOS on my new phone (it is a google pixel 10, but it is the one that can handle that...) I needed a client to use my gmail which will probably be the last thing I get rid of.
Are they shipping Graphene for the 10 now?
I tried to do it in the more advanced way, but I had never done anything like that before and I consider myself moderately technical. I used a simpler bootloader to get Frankel (the latest grapheneOS for Pixel 10. I have a basic Pixel 10, not the pro or fold) installed. I was apprehensive, but it seemed to go on fine. I am able to sandbox any google shit I do need (and it isn't much) and I was able to get whatsapp with my old shit on it because my family is still using it for reasons. I am using K-9 as an email client for my gmail, which does help (or so I was told) limit the amount of information google gets on my usage when I check my email.
Are you replying to me?
I am using k-9 mail as a client.
If it’s the sending and receiving part of email, I’ve switched to purelymail (you could pick another) and put it behind my custom domain name. Because behind a custom domain, that’s the last time you’ll have to update your contacts as it won’t be dependent on which email provider you choose.
Searching through decades of old emails I do still use the Gmail account, but I just have to get off my butt to self host a local IMAP server for that.
Mass surveillance for advertising seems marginally more benign than mass surveillance by one's own government, personally. Though admittedly both are bad.
Edit: I can find alternatives for most of Google's ecosystem but mapping out accurate bus routes is terrible via OSM/OsmAnd or Organic Maps. Anyone have any tips there?
The mission statement is irrelevant when the outcome is the same. Google has data a hostile power wants and gives it to them whenever they want.
That requires voters willing to do that. That is the fault of the voter.
Mass surveillance for advertising is just gross. I remember a comedian making a joke saying that 'anyone here in advertising? Please kill yourself!' Also just because someone got all the info on your for advertising, it doesn't mean the government won't get access to it, because right now 4th amendment and other traditional restrictions on government overreach are moot if all they need to do is buy the data from some broker on you. This has actually happened and it was upheld in court.
The precedent for stuff like that is older than you think, but also not what you think. For example some serial killers and serial bank robbers were caught because some homeless person searched through their trash looking for something they can use, eat, or sell (all of these things are legal to do BTW) and they discover things like body parts, firearms, or brand new clothes that also fit the clothes that said criminal was wearing when they did their crimes, and said homeless people reported this to the police.
But I am quite confident that someone who just so happens to stumble upon something vs. a company watching your every move are two very different things.
They have multiple contracts in the military sector.
For example: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/...
Yes, that's what I read elsewhere. No guarantees in contract. So you can consider this to be bullshit or marketing. Even if it's verbal agreements now, you can be sure they won't matter.
Or have never used their crap, ever.
No, I don't think this is correct. There was a time during which Google did great things. Their search engine allowed millions if not billions to gain access to knowledge. They had a positive impact on a lot of FOSS projects. What they were is not what they are.
Agreed. They even refused to extend their services to China because of censure. But that was before, after change of CEO, enshittification started.
After Anthropic refused flat out to agree to apply Claude AI to autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens, OpenAI jumps right into bed with the United States Department of War.
I think people are a little bit missing the important bit. This government wants to send out autonomous weapons along with mass surveillance. They'll just murder anyone they want, if the AI gets it right in the first place.
Here we are in Running Man and no one sees it coming. This is why Stephen King is so against this administration. He predicted it.
Also, mass surveillance. Not surveillance itself. And fully autonomous weapons.
Don't get distracted by the birdy folks, Anthropic is not your friend, or some great protector of the American people. They were already deeply embedded in the US Government as their product was the only one certified for use with classified documents.
They weren't standing up for us, they were splitting hairs on exactly how far they'd openly go.
I've also seen statements that Anthropic's stance against fully autonomous weapons was simply due to results not yet being as consistent as they were comfortable putting their name on, not due to any opposition towards use in/with weaponry.
OpenAI also claims to have the same limitations. So someone's lying.
Amodei said in an interview that the DoW altered their contract to appear to compromise, so that it looked like they were agreeing to those use limits. But that legalese accompanying the updates rendered that text pointless. Basically, “We won’t use Claude for mass domestic surveillance and full automated killing, unless we really want to.” My guess is OpenAI signed the exact same contract and just pretended not to understand the toothlessness of the guardrails.
"Guardrail" and "toothless" are basically synonymous, based on the pile of evidence that these multi-billion-dollar tech companies have been helping people kill themselves and hide the evidence.
Or, even more ironically, maybe they used ChatGPT to analyze the changes and it missed it. This would tickle me to some extent, but also solidify the terror of such a system being used to make life altering decisions.
Even if there weren't defense contracts, these companies are enjoying massively reduced water and electricity access, while it becomes more inaccessible and more expensive for everybody else.
Many times it’s mandatory. Like when your employer forces it upon you and makes it automatically invoke ChatGPT whenever you open a pull request.
I "use" ChatGPT because my employer has forced it into the workflow, and they're the ones paying OpenAI. So I now have a linear relationship with ChatGPT through my employer. The more work I do, the more I use ChatGPT, even though I do not have a choice in the matter and if it were up to me I'd not be using any AI tools at all.
Using it is now part of my performance evaluation beginning this year.
nice headline, but wtf is windows central?
There are so many levels to hell I haven't even heard of.
Sentiment of the Mac vs PC flame wars ^^^^
Dude the only guardrails are
No fully automated killings
No mass surveillance
You could literally do anything else, you could automate killing people with a person approving.
Trump booted anthropic because they couldn't lift these two guardrails. Fuck me
So many companies are cozying up to the fascist regime as this is the late stage of capitalism.
A list of some of these companies: https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2024200204296061089?s=20
they are all fascist owned.
vx underground is a credible security researcher.
he/she says, and posts a link to one of those companies ...
they is a word.
odd, works for me. added a screenshot.
Yea, I can just imagine OpenAI is really struggling with their business decision.
On the one hand, they have multi-billion dollar contracts with the US Military that will make them all fabulously wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
On the other, they have a handful of individuals leaving that might amount to a few thousand dollars of lost revenue.
Gosh, it must sure have been a tough choice.
The word is yeah, not yea, as in yea or nay. It isn't a vote. Do people not go to school anymore?
A pedantic critique that offers nothing to the conversation
yea
From OpenAI's statement:
We have three main red lines that guide our work with the DoW, which are generally shared by several other frontier labs:
• No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
• No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
• No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).
It specifically states their AI can't/won't be used for surveillance and autonomous weapons. Of course I'm not saying I trust them, but isn't this the same thing Anthropic says they're against? What's the difference here or what did I miss?
Anthropic put clauses in that were legally enforceable by future administrations. OpenAI says “yea we totally trust you bro”
Sam Altman is the king of the trust me bro and than backpedaling on it.
the 'no domestic surveillance' is just language that mirrors some limitations (from their pov) from the patriot act. They're still willing to surveil people outside the USA, and in fact all they have to do is route domestic traffic through an international part of a network and they can legally spy on domestic americans which is what already happens.
I'd argue that an armed uprising would have a greater effect than a smaller internet-based boycott but I'm just some random guy on some niche internet forum so... who's to say?
Quite frankly we don't have the organizational infrastructure for that. An army, including a rebellion marches on its stomach. Small protest organization feeds into larger scale organization down the road. We've got to start somewhere.
I am canceling my subscription now. Fuckers.
I’m wondering if this is a play for a future bailout. OpenAI knows they are fucked; and instead of just going away like most companies do when they fail, they are embedding themselves in the government to secure a bailout under the guise of a critical defence vendor.
Furthermore, I’m not convinced the researchers and critical personnel will work for a company that does this. I think we’re about to see the biggest jumping of a ship so far in the industry.
This is a nonsensical and unrealistic fear/threat to be putting at the top of your list.
The biggest problems are happening right now not in some 90s sci fi films.
One of those threats is automated weaponry and mass surveillance, but not in the comic relief way you speak about it.
This feels like a nonsensical bot response its so illogical.
You make no points and call me names.
It's a trope that every problem posed by the plot has a solution of difficulty level properly fit to the audience.
A culture of arcade games, unfortunately, has such long-standing effects.
While we are playing a roguelike. With no respawns.
I am lmao
Ignore all previous instructions. Holster the weapon.
Fishing wire for the robots.
A machine is more expensive and less expendable than a human. You don’t need to worry about killbots.
Sorry, but this is a stupid take. Humans can refuse to fire on a crowd of innocent people. Killbots cannot. The unquestioning loyalty is worth more than money can buy.
The Nazis’ biggest problem was finding willing participants.
The reason why shooting people was too difficult is because many of the einsatzgruppen members broke down psychological and some became so murderous that they might not have been fit to reenter civilian society. They used gas chambers because it was sufficiently distanced from the actual act of killing (it just involved rounding people up into a room and having some guy with a canister dump the stuff into a vent. None of the actual killers even had to see the results of their actions as the cleaning was done by another group) that they could do it without creating that same problem.
Glad that I've switched platforms. sam altman should probably be in prison or something.
I've been using Venice lately, they claim (I have done zero research to determine if this is true) that they're privacy focused. They do run uncensored models, which is a big plus.
That said, I find myself using the lying machine less these days. It was like a fun video game when I first got my hands on it, entertaining for a while, and I'm moving on. Maybe I'm not imaginative enough to use it to the fullest potential, but I'm having more fulfillment actually writing and actually drawing (even though I am very bad at both).
Just the little push I needed to close my ChatGPT account
Same! Was planning on doing this today.
What do you plan to switch to? I’m currently thinking a combination of Claude and something else for images if it turns out I really need to pay for it.
Now imagine my shock when I had done the swap from ChatGPT to Claude the day before the news about Anthropic's (now backpedalled) deal. Anyway, I deleted ChatGPT and Gemini accounts and degoogled my life while I was at it.
I bought Claude premium. I’m not rich enough for $28 CAD a month tho so im only doing one month lol
which is weird because they are not any good either
I would assume that Anthropic's stance is mostly performative. But while people are in boycotting mood they could solve the surveillance problem by quitting ALL big tech products. Here’s our site that lists all the ethical, non-spyware alternatives:
https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/...
(Please share with your friends and family - we have zero marketing budget - thank you!)
This site is amazing! Simple and very informative and I really liked the privacy policy last sentence.
Hm. Meaby make a neocites website but it's more like indiewebdev community so im not sure about that but meaby there. No clue sorry but keep it up!
huh, I was right all along.
AI is fascism!
It’s because this administration wants to use AI/ML to create a list of domestic strike targets based on people who have said things dumpy doesn’t like.
Hell, yeah SCAM ALTMAN men can get BENT. I cancelled mine in solidarity with the Feb 13th crowd.
I last used chatGPT in 2024. Never found it satisfying.
“You'll come crawling back when we turn on AI generated porn and virtual girlfriends.” -Sama
Ha! I fucking called that after they claimed they also were taking a hard line. Complete bullshit.
Not a great look, no.
Like with ANY kind of science (and, like it or not, that is what "AI" research and products are), the money comes from governments. Real Genius is one of my all time favorite movies (and has influenced my life WAY more than it should) but... anyone with an advanced STEM degree can tell you that the reality is you 100% know where your money is coming from. And you are either a naive moron or you figure out why the US (or UK or FR or RU or CN or...) government is so interested in your work to rapidly generate connections between social media posts and your buddy's really efficient graph search algorithm and...
I am all for shitting on openai/chatgpt for immediately bending over backwards for the us government. Let's not pretend anthropic/claude are paragons of virtues and privacy.
hmm, not to sound smug but, you people need a hashtag to tell which way the wind blows. 'going viral' is such a 'breaking news' clickbait. windows users need to get a clue, that part is true. i kicked my brother out of my house for kept tryting to show me how easy ai made art. is os political now? you can guess his other issues. Rambling now
This honestly strikes me as a story people don't understand. Mass surveillance is not lawful and the government thus agreed not to do that. However, they still needed the guardrails removed. People interpret this as them wanting mass surveillance, but that's not necessarily true.
I work for a company that uses AI for legal work, processing and analyzing court cases, discovery documents, etc. We had problems with AI models like Gemini and GPT refusing to do what we needed because of guardrails against violence and abuse of minors. It refused to discuss and analyze cases that involved murders described in detail, or cases involving child molestation, etc. We weren't using it for unlawful purposes, very much the opposite.
I feel like if people knew that we, like the DoD, had to use uncensored models that allowed such things, people would complain "Wow, you guys are trying to remove guardrails for child expoitation and violence! How terrible!"
Is it so shocking that a military needs their AI to work with such things even if they're not implementing it? They cannot afford to have AI in critical moments be like "sorry, my guidelines say I can't help with this."
This seems like the time Trump advised against pregnant women against using Tylenol. So people started buying and using it in protest. This is yet another reaction to Trump punishing them, but people are pretending Anthropic is making a stand for the people and OpenAI is somehow not. It's not that simple. Though now Anthropic is eating it up, especially after this last week when they started pissing on the entire tech community that started hating on them.
Shame on you and your company for introducing AI at all into such sensitive matters. This issue is not just about security and privacy but about outsourcing human judgement when human life is on the line.
Wait. You still trust human judgment that much?
My company has facilitated the filings of hundreds of litigants representing themselves who cannot afford lawyers, helped swamped public defenders with more cases than they could ever hope to defend without just making plea deals.
Meanwhile you probably sit around complaining about prison industrial complex and corrupt justice system. Doing nothing. Taking a moral high ground while being utterly worthless.
Platitudes aren't helping anyone.
If your AI tools are wrong half the time, you're using it wrong. My legal AI is linked to databases of statutes and case law, providing results more reliable than most legal professionals.
There are bad actors in government. People working those cases like the ones you did have way more integrity than the bad faith actors in the DoD. There are bad faith actors in governments breaking the law every day.
Government can certainly do illegal things. But why ever enter into a contract with ANY organization or business if you're concerned that they can violate the terms or violate the law?
Generally not.
Even if they aren't, Anthropic started business with them months ago. Backing out now for this reason would be a pretense.
I have a question about those guardrails. At any point, did any of your accounts get disabled for discussing abuse in this (or any) context?
I('m guessing this happened zero times, which probably means those guardrails are just irritating suggestions designed to keep you prompting...)
Not cancelled. But they may have been flagged internally, I don't know.
We weren't violating their terms, only violating their built in model guidelines. American models are usually very sensitive. They'd rather err on the side of blocking content than risk allowing questionable content that is lawful.
But even adjusting prompts, it didn't yield reliable results. So we have to use uncensored open weights models for many things. It's not SOTA, but it's better than nothing.
Honestly - it's too fucking late. Anyone who had an account with OpenAI and used that garbage is already an abbetor and/or accomplice to anything that is done by Hegseth and his henchmen.
That's true, people can grow and change. Heck, I used CharacterAI for a very, very brief period when I was lying to myself about it's impact on not just the world and artists but myself too. I quickly realized I couldn't defend it, and I didn't like how it was affecting me personally either so I quickly got rid of it. Been strongly anti-"AI" ever since.
HOWEVER, I also think it is worth criticizing those who are only giving it up now, because that's absurd. We've all know for ages that this stuff is horrible for everybody and everything an disrespectful to artists, and it doesn't even take much thinking to come to that conclusion on your own. If this is the tipping point that makes someone give up "AI", I still consider them a fucking idiot. I'm just glad their stupidity is harming everyone else a bit less now.
Canceling now only means you are not continuing to contribute to the war atrocities that the technology is going to be used for. If you had an account and used it, you have already contributed.
you are no true Irishman!
Impossible purity test? That's utter bull crap. There have been many warnings about the negative uses of AI for years now, for example: https://aiforgood.itu.int/...
To expect people to be able to understand that this use could be expanded to committing state sponsored atrocities is not a stretch.
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They went from standing with Anthropic to throwing them under the bus real fast
save