Matt Rice-Jacobine

Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person's life, automatically and at massive scale.

Fully Autonomous Weapons Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy.

Even 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.

But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.

We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America's warfighters and civilians at risk.

We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems, but they have not accepted this offer.

In addition, without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained, professional troops exhibit every day.

They need to be deployed with proper guardrails, which don't exist today.

To our knowledge, these two exceptions have not been a barrier to accelerating the adoption and use of our models within our armed forces to date.

The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to any lawful use and remove safeguards in the cases mentioned above.

They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards.

They have also threatened to designate us a supply chain risk, a label reserved for US adversaries never before applied to an American company, and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards removal.

We cannot in good conscience accede to their request.

It is the Department's prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision.

but given the substantial value that Anthropic's technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.

Our strong preference is to continue to serve the department and our warfighters, with our two requested safeguards in place.

Should the department choose to off-board Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions.

Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.

We remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.

This article was narrated by Type 3 Audio for Less Wrong.