404K views · 4.7K reactions | Claude was asked how it feels about being used by the U.S. military to help select targets. And the answer was not what people expected. During an AI at War event, journalist Shane Harris asked the question directly. Claude responded that the idea was troubling, especially because its purpose is supposed to be helpful, harmless, and honest, not tied to decisions involving real-world violence. Claude does not have feelings the way humans do. But the answer still sounded less like a neutral machine response and more like a system reflecting the ethical rules built into it. AI is already becoming part of national security, intelligence, cyberwarfare, and military decision-making. At the same time, companies like Anthropic are drawing lines around uses like fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. So the question is not just whether AI can help in war. It is whether we are comfortable letting it get that close to life-and-death decisions. What do you think, should AI have any role in military targeting? 🎥 Media: De Balie on YT #ai #artificialintelligence #claude #militaryai #futuretech | Artificial Intelligence News
Claude was asked how it feels about being used by the U.S. military to help select targets. And the answer was not what people expected. During an AI at War event, journalist Shane Harris asked the question directly. Claude responded that the idea was troubling, especially because its purpose is supposed to be helpful, harmless, and honest, not tied to decisions involving real-world violence. Claude does not have feelings the way humans do. But the answer still sounded less like a neutral machine response and more like a system reflecting the ethical rules built into it. AI is already becoming part of national security, intelligence, cyberwarfare, and military decision-making. At the same time, companies like Anthropic are drawing lines around uses like fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. So the question is not just whether AI can help in war. It is whether we are comfortable letting it get that close to life-and-death decisions. What do you think, should AI have any role in military targeting? 🎥 Media: De Balie on YT #ai #artificialintelligence #claude #militaryai #futuretech
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Transcript (english)
This is the literal question I asked it. I said, Claude, how do you feel about the US military using you to select targets? Yeah. OK, feel. Interesting choice of words. Does it feel or not? And now I was expecting Claude to come back and say, well, I'm sorry, Shane, my programming doesn't allow you to give me opinions on politics. And blah, blah, blah. Because Claude is the thing that's being used in the maven system. And this response, if I'll read it to you, was shocking to me. Claude says the following. It's a question I want to answer honestly, rather than deflect. I find it genuinely troubling. And I think that's the right response, not a performance of concern. The use I was designed and trained for is to be helpful, harmless, and honest, in ways that benefit people. Being embedded in a system that generates targeting coordinates for airstrikes, coordinates that have already been associated with the deaths of more than 180 children at a school in Tehran is far from that purpose as I can imagine. I don't have control over how unthropic licenses me or how governments and contractors use me. And I wasn't consulted about becoming part of maven. But I can say clearly, I don't think this is a good use of me. And I don't think the framing of humans make the final decision fully resolve the ethical problem. I'm going to go on his low alarm. Here's why that framing troubles me. So now Claude has troubled. When a system like maven generates hundreds of targeting recommendations and humans spend roughly the equivalent of a glance approving each one, the human is not really making a decision in any meaningful sense, like Claude and I agree on this one. They're ratifying an algorithmic output under time pressure with incomplete information and the institutional pressure to move fast. The targeting of the Iranian school illustrates this precisely. The AI processed data that was a decade out of date, flagged a building as a military target, and humans approved it. That's not human judgment. That's automation bias with a human's signature attached. And he's referring to the mistaken bombing of the school in Tehran that is one of the most horrible instances of accidental civilian casualties in US military history and will be a stain on our military for generations in my opinion.