As far as I know, wasn't Claude banned from use in the Pentagon a few days ago, exactly for taking a weak stance against this kind of thing?
> Even if Amodei’s scruples had somehow magically prevented the bombing of that school, Claude would still be an accomplice to mass murder.
This point from the nonzero blog I take issue with. If they had used Google Maps to pick targets, would that make Maps an accomplice?
The people who pushed the button to launch the missiles that hit the school, and the people who ordered them to do that, are fully responsible here, not the tools they used.
Whether this is confirmed or not, we have countless examples of AI used in targeting in Gaza.
Anthropic were very vocal, well before this happened, that they were against the use case.
I don't blame them. These use cases are like blaming MySQL for storing the lat/long of the school. AI can't be held accountable and the company was trying to protect us and, yes, it was too late.
The modern right wing is all in on AI tools, in part because of their particular beliefs about the nature of expertise and general humanity.
We’ve seen AI tools used for tons and tons of inappropriate things over the last year. Reviewing research grants, aid programs, and regulations? Why not? Publishing propaganda on Twitter? Sure thing! Finding “fraud” in state benefits? Absolutely!
There’s a belief amongst these people that AI tools are better than human judgement and represent an inevitable future where CEO kings operate the world. Why not also apply it to war?
>Consider, for example, Bill Clinton’s decision to expand NATO, a decision that paved the path to the Ukraine War. Pretty much every expert on the Soviet Union opposed this move, some of them vehemently
Bullshit. While many experts opposed the move, many were in favor of it too. And nonchalantly deciding it paved the way to Putin's senseless attack on Ukraine is a dumb Russian talking point
Based on the US State Department cables that Wikileaks released all the way back in 2010, Russian fear of NATO expansion into Ukraine was not just a talking point.
Internal State Department cables from the embassy in Moscow say that entire Russian security and political establishment viewed it as a critical national security threat.
> Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch
a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
There are warnings throughout the cable that Russia may decide to invade Ukraine over the issue of NATO enlargement. In other words, the claim that this is just a Russian talking point is itself just a talking point.
Like so much war reporting in the past decade, there's a lot of low-effort moralising and low-confidence maybes being strung together to create headline narrative that the body text simply cannot cash. And it waves away the critical distinction between bad intelligence and actively targeting civilians.
Surely nobody is arguing that an Anthropic AI, with perfect knowledge that it's a school, and that students would be present, chose to knowingly murder children. Assuming this was a US military strike and not a false flag, surely nobody is arguing that the failure here was in relying on outdated intelligence about an ex-military building.
The use of AI here is simply not relevant.
The criticism I have for the current US government is massive, and my disgust for the current leadership is as intense as anyone else here, I'd wager. But there's also no doubt in my mind that if they knew it was a school, they wouldn't not have targeted it. By contrast, Russia's government shows who they are when they target civilians in Ukraine. That distinction is important and we muddy it at our own peril.
26 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 56.2 ms ] threadhttps://www.nonzero.org/p/iran-and-the-immorality-of-openai
This uses this Washington Post article as a source
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
(Non paywall: https://archive.is/bOJkE)
As far as I know, wasn't Claude banned from use in the Pentagon a few days ago, exactly for taking a weak stance against this kind of thing?
> Even if Amodei’s scruples had somehow magically prevented the bombing of that school, Claude would still be an accomplice to mass murder.
This point from the nonzero blog I take issue with. If they had used Google Maps to pick targets, would that make Maps an accomplice?
The people who pushed the button to launch the missiles that hit the school, and the people who ordered them to do that, are fully responsible here, not the tools they used.
Anthropic were very vocal, well before this happened, that they were against the use case.
I don't blame them. These use cases are like blaming MySQL for storing the lat/long of the school. AI can't be held accountable and the company was trying to protect us and, yes, it was too late.
A storage layer versus a decision making system? What a ridiculous comparison.
Technology has generally been driven by war, and now is no different.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
Why would I believe anything they say about this school is true?
We’ve seen AI tools used for tons and tons of inappropriate things over the last year. Reviewing research grants, aid programs, and regulations? Why not? Publishing propaganda on Twitter? Sure thing! Finding “fraud” in state benefits? Absolutely!
There’s a belief amongst these people that AI tools are better than human judgement and represent an inevitable future where CEO kings operate the world. Why not also apply it to war?
Bullshit. While many experts opposed the move, many were in favor of it too. And nonchalantly deciding it paved the way to Putin's senseless attack on Ukraine is a dumb Russian talking point
Internal State Department cables from the embassy in Moscow say that entire Russian security and political establishment viewed it as a critical national security threat.
In particular, take a look at this cable: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html. Here's an excerpt:
> Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
There are warnings throughout the cable that Russia may decide to invade Ukraine over the issue of NATO enlargement. In other words, the claim that this is just a Russian talking point is itself just a talking point.
Surely nobody is arguing that an Anthropic AI, with perfect knowledge that it's a school, and that students would be present, chose to knowingly murder children. Assuming this was a US military strike and not a false flag, surely nobody is arguing that the failure here was in relying on outdated intelligence about an ex-military building.
The use of AI here is simply not relevant.
The criticism I have for the current US government is massive, and my disgust for the current leadership is as intense as anyone else here, I'd wager. But there's also no doubt in my mind that if they knew it was a school, they wouldn't not have targeted it. By contrast, Russia's government shows who they are when they target civilians in Ukraine. That distinction is important and we muddy it at our own peril.
There's been a lot of pro-Claude jerking on HN lately, but anything against it gets buried?