Anthropic Echoes “Boss” Tweed

Photograph of Claude being used on a cell phone (provided by GK Images/Alamy, used under the headline of the article from The Guardian being discussed)

Marvin Minsky, one of the “founding fathers” of artificial intelligence (AI), was my advisor for the thesis papers I wrote in my senior undergraduate year and my doctoral dissertation. As a result, it is difficult for me to encounter any news article purporting to write about that topic without my “Spidey-sense” tingling. This happened this morning when I was reviewing my news feeds from The Guardian. When I saw the headline “US military used Anthropic’s AI model Claude in Venezuela raid, report says” I could not resist reading further.

The critical sentence near the beginning of the article is as follows:

Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance.

This appeared shortly after the opening sentence:

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during its operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Saturday, a high-profile example of how the US defence department is using artificial intelligence in its operations.

One would think that this is a cut-and-dried case of cognitive dissonance. However, this seems to be a case in which silence is louder than dissonance. William Christou, author of the article, put it this way:

A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment on whether Claude was used in the operation, but said any use of the AI tool was required to comply with its usage policies. The US defence department did not comment on the claims.

In other words, both sides are waffling, recalling the words of Boss Tweed when reporters tried to call out his corruption: “What are you gonna do about it?” One would think that both Anthropic and the Department of Defense should be called out to answer that question. For now, however, it seems as if we shall have to cope with deafening silence!