Anthropic opposed AI in military use for mass surveillance and autonomous lethal decisions.

The Pentagon argues that military AI should follow only U.S. law, not private company ethics.

The U.S. military prefers "unrestricted lawful use" of AI, but very few actual laws or guardrails exist.

Research on human decision-making suggests AI should be trained to act with human-like ethical responsibility.

Historically, only humans made life-or-death decisions about using force and lethal weapons. But now, society is beginning a new age in which machines with artificial intelligence may be equipped to make autonomous lethal decisions without humans in the decision-making chain. Does creating autonomous robots for lethal military use suggest that we have entered a brave new world—or a virtual minefield?

Recent reports suggest that the Pentagon was unhappy with the AI company Anthropic, Inc., because the company leadership didn’t agree with the Pentagon's request for Anthropic to abandon certain guidelines for its AI model used by the military.1 Anthropic has a long track record of its AI model being used by the military on classified cloud and other intelligence and military applications. Anthropic was clearly OK with monetizing its AI model for most military applications, but the company wanted to limit the military’s use of its AI in two distinct ways;

Mass surveillance. Anthropic argues that AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious risks to fundamental liberties. Anthropic did not wish to allow its AI model to be used for any large-scale domestic surveillance in the U.S.

Fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic wished to restrict the use of its AI model for fully autonomous weapons that take humans out of the decision-making........

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