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Comment by michelsedgh | Hacker News Reader

So would you have preferred the Nazis to develop the most powerful weapons and they win the world war? (which they were trying to do?)

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If Anthropic does give the DoD what they want, does that magically stop China, Iran, Russia, etc from advancing in AI arms development?

If Anthropic doesn't give the DoD what they want, does that mean that China, Iran, Russia, etc magically leapfrog not only Anthropic, but the entire US defense industry, and take over the planet?

> If Anthropic does give the DoD what they want, does that magically stop China, Iran, Russia, etc from advancing in AI arms development?

> If Anthropic doesn't give the DoD what they want, does that mean that China, Iran, Russia, etc magically leapfrog not only Anthropic, but the entire US defense industry, and take over the planet?

The risks are high, so if you're the US, you want a portfolio of possible winners. The risks are too high to not leverage all the cutting edge AI labs.

Anthropic was already giving them that. It’s not like they need domestic mass surveillance or autonomous kill bots to have a portfolio of possible winners. If the goal is to keep the US competitive in AI, this whole process was actively unhelpful. Honestly more helpful for our adversaries than for us.

Why are you assuming that people in China, Iran, Russia etc are not having these exact same conversations, and perhaps a powerful example from the USA, along with some belief that the USA will not be able to easily get this technology, help inspire them to abstain as well?

However horrific the regimes in these countries are, the people behind the technology there are just as likely to be intelligent and moral human beings as the people in the USA and Europe working on these are.

No, that's precisely why I'm opposed to it happening here, and why I prefer the idea of Anthropic limiting their contribution to creating such a scenario.

With the benefit of hindsight we know the Nazis in fact were not racing to develop The Bomb. Reasonable assumption to have oriented around at the time though.

Its not just the atomic bomb im talking the usa had the best production of fighter jets, bombers, all kinds of communication technology, deciphering technology all the ammunition, all of those together beat the Nazis and they were trying their best to develop better and more advanced technologies than usa!

Did WMDs have a meaningful effect on stopping the Nazis? I thought the bomb wasn't dropped until after they surrendered.

The only two atomic weapons ever deployed weren't even targeting Nazi Germany, but Japan. Dark but true: they were both deliberately and knowingly targeted at civilian populations.

And inflicted less damage than the fire bombing campaigns on civ pop centers that were carried out along side the A-bombs.

The A-bombs were not the worst part of the attack on Japan. And thus were not "needed to end the war". They were part of marketing /the/ super power.

"Needed to win the war," no. The US could've continued to firebomb and then follow with a land invasion, which would've killed both more Japanese and more Allies.

Was it the best path to end the war? Certainly.

The modern argument around targeting civilians or not was not even relevant at the time due to the advent of strategic bombing, which itself was seen as less-horrific than the stalemated trench warfare of WW1. The question was only whether to target civilian inputs to the military with an atomic weapon (and hopefully shock & awe into submission) or firebomb and invade.

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