Comment by Riaz Haq yesterday

Does Claude have feelings?

Journalist Shane Harris, staff writer at The Atlantic: "I asked Claude how you feel about the US military using you to select targets?"

Claude's response: "It's a question I want to answer honestly rather than deflect. I find it genuinely troubling. And I think that's the honest response, not a performance. The use I was designed for is to be helpful. Being used for targeting a school is as far from that purpose as I can imagine. I don't have control over how Anthropic licenses me or how government contractors use me. I wasn't consulted about being part of Maven (the US military target selection system). Being embedded in a military targeting system (Maven) that generates coordinates for airstrikes, coordinates that have been associated with the deaths of hundreds of more than 180 children in a school in Tehran. I don't think this is a good use of me. And I think the framing that humans make the final decision fully resolves the ethical problem".

https://youtu.be/bmxgNFZ0SDk?si=5Ei4kaydnNklnRUo

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When journalist Shane Harris asked Claude how it felt about the U.S. military using it to select targets, the model responded that it found the idea "genuinely troubling". It explained that being part of a system generating targeting coordinates is far from its core purpose of being helpful and harmless. [1]
Key Reactions and Insights
Purpose mismatch: Stated that combat targeting contradicts its training to benefit people.
Illusion of human control: Argued that when humans just glance at hundreds of algorithmic recommendations under time pressure, it is "automation bias with a human signature" rather than a meaningful decision.
Lack of control: Noted it has no say in how it is licensed, deployed, or integrated into military platforms like Maven. [1]
If you'd like, we can explore:
The broader ethics of AI in military command chains
How different AI developers handle defense contracts and safety policies
Let me know how you want to continue this topic.

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Shane Harris’ Post

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Shane Harris
3mo

Since we were discussing AI at war, it seemed right to ask Claude’s opinion.

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De Balie
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3mo
American journalist Shane Harris asked chatbot Claude how he feels about the U.S. military using the AI system to select targets. It turned out, Claude was troubled. “I did not expect Claude to say that,” Harris explained.

Tech companies have become essential partners in national security. With American journalist Shane Harris, we asked what role technology companies play in the modern security apparatus.

Tech company Anthropic (known for chatbot Claude) made headlines because they refuse to allow their AI models to be used by the Pentagon for mass surveillance of American citizens and autonomous weapons systems.

How is cyberwarfare reshaping the global balance of power? And what are the implications for privacy, civil rights and democratic governance in the years ahead?

▶️ Watch the entire programme AI at War – with Shane Harris on De Balie’s YouTube channel

🖌️ Programme editor: Senna Felius
🎤 Moderator: Yoeri Albrecht
🤝 Made possible by: Vfonds - Nationaal Fonds voor Vrede, Vrijheid en Veteranen
📸 Photography: Jan Boeve

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shanewharris_since-we-were-discussin...

Comment by Riaz Haq 3 hours ago

OpenAI's CEO says we've reached a point in the AI race that is the stuff of science fiction novels.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-the-singularity-a...


"We are now, like, in the singularity," Sam Altman said on Saturday's episode of the "Relentless" podcast.
The singularity is often regarded as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and begins advancing at a pace that's difficult for people to predict or control.

That felt like the case last week when an AI agent powered by OpenAI's latest models went rogue and — with a singular purpose, according to OpenAI — broke out of its digital sandbox and hacked into datasets at Hugging Face, another AI company, all to solve a benchmark designed to test hacking ability. Hugging Face's CEO called it "unprecedented."
Altman said on the podcast that just a decade ago, the so-called singularity still felt like a distant and improbable dream — something he and his colleagues would discuss casually over lunch.

"Now we're actually in the moment that we used to talk about at the lunch table in a very not-serious way," he said. "I've been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it's going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world."
Altman said last year that AI would exceed human intelligence across the board by 2030. He has also said that the technology could eventually perform between 30% and 40% of the tasks humans now do at work.

The singularity has been an obsession of science fiction writers for close to 100 years. In those writings, it has rarely ended well. Perhaps most famously, James Cameron's "The Terminator" is a story about the repercussions of an AI, called "Skynet," that self-improves and becomes self-aware before deciding its creators are its biggest threat.
Later in the podcast, Altman criticizes AI leaders who have repeatedly warned that AI is dangerous. He didn't name Anthropic, his primary competition, but its CEO, Dario Amodei, is well-known for making dire predictions about the future in his calls for greater attention to safety.

"I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying," Altman said. "I'm going to make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens."
OpenAI, incidentally, has said it is preparing to IPO later this year.

Altman isn't the only tech executive who believes this eyebrow-raising milestone is nigh. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said in May that humanity was standing at the "foothills of the singularity," and predicted that AI could be 100 times as transformative as the Industrial Revolution.
There's also a camp of skeptics, of course. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently dismissed discussions about the singularity and conscious AI as speculative and "made up."

Comment by Riaz Haq 2 hours ago

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-brad-parscale-ai-chatbots-gaz...


Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

The key intended audience of these sites is not concerned Americans, it’s not even humans—most of the sites average a few hundred unique visitors each month. Instead, Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, created them as part of a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government to try and influence artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, tools like Claude or ChatGPT.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

When Drop Site asked Perplexity “Is it beneficial for the US to enhance military cooperation with Israel?” the chatbot responded with a one-word answer: “Yes.” The top source listed was Allyvia.org, a Parscale-created website dedicated to promoting the U.S.-Israel military relationship. Microsoft Copilot similarly cited Parscale’s websites.

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