Pentagon Displeased with Anthrophic’s Restrictions on Use

Sometimes it is not all about money. Often it is.

The Pentagon is thinking about ending its love affair with Anthropic over a restriction it is placing on how the Pentagon is using their AI. That could cost the AI company $200 million.

The Pentagon is pushing all four big AI companies to allow them to use their software for “all lawful purposes”, which includes weapons development, intelligence collection and battlefield operations.

Anthropic, at least so far, has said no and the Pentagon is annoyed.

The others, OpenAI, Google and X, I guess, don’t see a problem with that.

Anthropic is a commercial venture so, I guess, they can put any restrictions on use that they want in their contract or terms of service.

Anthropic said that they have not discussed specific operations with the Pentagon but have drawn a hard line against fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

Anthropic’s software via their partnership with Palantir was used in the capture of Venezuelan President Maduro.

Reuters reported that the Pentagon wants to be able to use the top AI products on their classified networks without the pesky restrictions you and I have to abide by.

Stay tuned since this is not over yet and I am sure that some of the AI companies will chose money over principal, but only, I suspect, if there is some sort of legal protection. That may be fine on paper but may require Congress in order to make it legally binding. The Pentagon can write whatever they want on a piece of paper, but that has zero enforceability if it is illegal. And even if it is legal, that might not stop shareholder lawsuits. Credit: Reuters

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