Anthropic Irks White House with Limits on Models’ Use
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Anthropic's limits on AI model usage have irked the White House, sparking debate on the ethics of AI use in government and the role of private companies in regulating their own technologies.
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Viva local-first software!
And I’m not singling out Anthropic. None of these companies or governments (i.e. people) can be trusted at face value.
But really this is just pointless semantics. It doesn't matter what it is called it is still a problem.
The congress is dominated by the republicans, who have given up on every last shred of dignity and turned themselves into yes men that will approve anything Trump says, from a justified invasion of Greenland to how unnecessary it would be to publish the Epstein files.
And the executive branch currently hunts down government employees with an unsuitable personal opinion, takes jet plane bribes from foreign leaders, and tries to eradicate slavery and the Native American genocide from museums and school books.
Tell me about those three branches again. Right now, they have been perverted into a single tool to carry out the whims of an egotistic asshole backed by a powerful group of conservative activists.
Russia (or literally any other dictatorial tyre pyre) also has three branches of government and a token opposition, for all the good it does.
Just because you have a nice piece of paper that outlines some kind of de jure separation of powers, doesn't mean shit in practice. Russia (and prior to it, the USSR) has no shortage of such pieces of paper.
>For instance, an agency could pay for a subscription or negotiate a pay-per-use contract with an AI provider, only to find out that it is prohibited from using the AI model in certain ways, limiting its value.
This is of course quite false. They of course know the restriction when they sign the contract.
One my fave new AI prompts: you are my Atty and a expert in privacy law and online contracts-of-adhesion. Review the TOS aggreement at [url] and privacy policies at [url] and brief me on all areas that should be of concern to me.
Takes 90 seconds from start to finish, and reveals how contemptuously illusory these agreements are when SO MANY reserve the right to change anything with no duty to disclose changes.
I know that some things like this are accepted in America, and I can't judge how it would be dealt with. I assume that contracts between companies and other sophisticated entities are actual contracts with unchangeable terms.
Not really. Everything you said about contracts above applies to contracts in America last time I checked. Disclaimer: IANAL, my legal training amounts of 1 semester of "Business Law" in college.
This would be a non-contract in Swedish law, for example.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code
[2]: The UCC also covers other things, but these cases are a lot of what it's best known for.
This reads to me like:
* Some employee somewhere wanted to click the shiny Claude button in the AWS FedRamp marketplace
* Whatever USG legal team were involved said "that domestic surveillance clause doesn't work for us" and tried to redline it.
* Anthropic rejected the redline.
* Someone got mad and went to Semafor.
It's unclear that this has even really escalated prior to the article, or that Anthropic are really "taking a stand" in a major way (after all, their model is already on the Fed marketplace) - it just reads like a typical fed contract negotiation with a squeaky wheel in it somewhere.
The article is also full of other weird nonsense like:
> Traditional software isn’t like that. Once a government agency has access to Microsoft Office, it doesn’t have to worry about whether it is using Excel to keep track of weapons or pencils.
While it might not be possible to enforce them as easily, many, many shrink-wrap EULAs restrict the way in which software can be used. Almost always there is an EULA carve-out with different tier for lifesaving or safety uses (due to liability / compliance concerns) and for military uses (sometimes for ethics reasons but usually due to a desire to extract more money from those customers).
THIS SOFTWARE PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SUPPORT FOR PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAILSAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.
And for bonus points, go find the last certified compilers for LOR1 rating that follow 882 guidelines.
Now you’ve scratched the surface of safety-critical software. Actually writing it is a blast. I think most web developers would weep in frustration. “Wait, I can’t allocate memory that way? Or that way? Or in this way not at all?! There’s no framework?! You mean I need to do all this to verify a button click??!!”
I think people that don't write safety-critical software in general will weep in frustration, not just web developers.
author added "must be used for good, not evil" to the license
...and IBM asked for an exception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138866
note that restricting use of software makes it non-free gpl-wise.
RMS said the GPL does not restrict rights of the USER of software, just that when the software is redistributed, the rights are passed along.
A much younger, more naive me (~20 years ago) actually emailed him to complain about the ambiguous terms and he replied saying something to the effect of "It's obviously unenforceable, get over it."
Nor does it prohibit use or resale of "Java Technology" for any particular purpose
It does suggest they are aware of Java's shortcomings
If it gives you high priority support, I dont care, if its the same tier of support, then that's just obnoxiously greedy.
(Legally you can't do it with a click-through either, but the lack of a contract means that the recourse for the user is just to stop buying the service.)
It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation (EDIT: they’re a US corp), would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers. Or are they baking the restrictions into the model weights?
"Foreign" to who? I interpretted your comment as foreign to the US government (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I was confused because Anthropic is a US company.
The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).
> The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).
Very much so, I completely agree.
2) Are government agencies sending prompts to model inference APIs on remote servers?
Of course, look up FedRAMP. Depending on the assurance level necessary, cloud services run on either cloud carve-outs in US datacenters (with various "US Person Only" rules enforced to varying degrees) or for the highest levels, in specific assured environments (AWS Secret Region for example).
3) It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation, would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers.
There's no evidence they do, it's just lawyers vs lawyers here as far as I can tell.
"...cannot use...For ongoing surveillance or real-time or near real-time identification or persistent tracking of the individual using any of their personal data, including biometric data, without the individual’s valid consent."
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/anthropic-o...
While the terms of service are what they are, the US Government can withdraw its military contracts from Anthropic (or refuse future contracts if they don't have any so far). Or softly suggest to its own contractors to limit their business dealings with Anthropic. Then Anthropic will have hard time securing computing from NVIDIA, AWS, Google, MSFT, Oracle, etc...
This won't last.
Would you rather pretend that things like that aren't happening?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_onqn68GHY
One of the stages was gov/military personnel became dependent on AI for decision making.
More generously, 'an Expert-Driven forecast that offers a possible extrapolation' or possible realistic scenario.
Parts of it seem to be coming true already, parts of it are dependent on some technology breakthroughs that haven't happened.
Forecasting mileage may vary
Good? What if, and I know how crazy this sounds, not using AI to surveil people was a more desirable goal than the success of yet another tech company at locking in government pork and subsidies?
By using the Apple Software, you represent and warrant that you ... also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. -- iTunes
No production of missiles with iTunes? Curses, foiled again.
Second, this article is incredibly dismissive and whiny about anyone ever taking safety seriously, for pretty much any definition of "safety". I mean, it even points out that Anthropic has "the only top-tier models cleared for top secret security situations", which seems like a direct result of them actually giving a shit about safety in the first place.
And the whining about "the contract says we can't use it for surveillance, but we want to use it for good surveillance, so it doesn't count. Their definition of surveillance is politically motivated and bad"! It's just... wtf? Is it surveillance or not?
This isn't a partisan thing. It's barely a political thing. It's more like "But we want to put a Burger King logo on the syringe we use for lethal injections! Why are you upset? We're the state so it's totally legal to be killing people this way, so you have to let us use your stuff however we want."
> Other AI model providers also list restrictions on surveillance, but offer more specific examples and often have carveouts for law enforcement activities. OpenAI’s policy, for instance, prohibits “unauthorized monitoring of individuals,” implying consent for legal monitoring by law enforcement.
This is unintentionally (for the author) hilarious. It's a blatant misinterpretation of the language, while complimenting the clarity of the lanuage. Who "authorizes" "monitoring of individuals"? If an executive agency monitors an individual in violation of a court order, is that "authorized" ?
I do love the smell of hypocrisy early in the morning.
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