Don’t expect AI companies to be angels – Old Gold & Black
At 5:01 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 27, just hours before the U.S. and Israel launched the airstrikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a devastating regionwide war, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic risked the Pentagon’s wrath by holding firm to admirable moral convictions. CEO Dario Amodei refused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demand for “full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models,” most notably Claude software, insisting that he would not allow the Defense Department to use his company’s AI products without specific prohibitions against “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.”
Anthropic has faced painful consequences as a result. For one, the federal government severed its contracts with the corporation and formed a new partnership with OpenAI. It should be noted that the company behind ChatGPT maintains that its military and intelligence agreements include ethical boundaries. More unusually, however, the Defense Department branded Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” the first time in history they have applied the damning security designation to a U.S. company.
Amodei’s defiance took true courage, and his clear-sighted leadership should be an inspiration to others charting ethical precedents for AI. But the fact that a single person at the helm of one company was responsible for exhibiting such moral restraint is indicative of broader institutional and societal failures. Other AI developers will not necessarily follow in Amodei’s footsteps, and Amodei himself cannot live up to the ideal of a righteous philosopher king. Rather than expecting AI corporations to regulate themselves, we should be developing durable, responsive ethical frameworks that keep dangerous technologies in check.
AI is still a morally fraught tool
I can’t believe I’m commending an AI company. Call me “misandroidic.” In the months since I criticized Wake Forest’s adoption of generative content, my concerns with artificial intelligence have only grown.
I don’t completely avoid AI, but I strive to distance myself from its temptations. I deleted my ChatGPT account and stopped using AI to study for quizzes and exams. I set Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine and browser that donates to environmental efforts, as my default, and I turned off automatic “AI overviews” on my searches when using Google Chrome. (Follow these instructions to do the latter on your own device.)
My friends groan whenever I start my grousing, but I’m glad I’m gaining a reputation for being blunt about my anti-AI beliefs. I hope my words plant seeds. Meaningful resistance to AI will come not from any one person perfectly shunning chatbots, but from lots and lots of humans reflecting on how they can best create meaningful boundaries on technological incursions into their lives. An Ecosia search for “AI not inevitable” returns hundreds of excellent, human-written essays arguing exactly that: the AI debate will not be over until we decide that it is over.
I want to praise Wake Forest for its participation in such conversations. The university’s guidelines for academic and administrative use of AI may be broader and more supportive of generative technologies than I would prefer, but they are a first step in coming to a consensus. I was also heartened by the detailed AI policies that two of my professors included in their syllabi this semester. Our country may lack thoughtful top-down AI laws for a long time, but we can start laying the intellectual foundations for future policies right now in our nation’s classrooms.
AI companies need regulation. They need it now, and they will continue needing it for the foreseeable future. While Anthropic’s ethical constitution is robust and genuine, the company does not belong on a pedestal. No matter how many jazzy, serif-font, arthouse-evoking film stock color-graded commercials the corporation produces, the fact remains that Amodei and his company were more than willing to let the Defense Department wage war with their products as long as the surveillance systems gathered intelligence only on foreign countries and the lethal robots remained just “partially autonomous.”
Anthropic benefits enormously from its public image as the “good” AI organization braving the raging philosophical battles of Silicon Valley and Washington, but it, too, should be held to the highest moral standards. If James Madison wrote “The Federalist Papers” in 2026 rather than 1788, perhaps he would have argued that “if AI models and their developers were angels, no government would be necessary.” But no AI company can be an angel, not even Anthropic—and we shouldn’t expect them to be.
Miriam Fabrycky is a sophomore from Copenhagen, Denmark, majoring in politics & international affairs with minors in journalism and philosophy. She is a member of Minor Variation a capella group and Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). Outside of the newsroom, Miriam enjoys reading, hiking and listening to music.
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This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
Anthropic has faced painful consequences as a result. For one, the federal government severed its contracts with the corporation and formed a new partnership with OpenAI. It should be noted that the company behind ChatGPT maintains that its military and intelligence agreements include ethical boundaries. More unusually, however, the Defense Department branded Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” the first time in history they have applied the damning security designation to a U.S. company.
Amodei’s defiance took true courage, and his clear-sighted leadership should be an inspiration to others charting ethical precedents for AI. But the fact that a single person at the helm of one company was responsible for exhibiting such moral restraint is indicative of broader institutional and societal failures. Other AI developers will not necessarily follow in Amodei’s footsteps, and Amodei himself cannot live up to the ideal of a righteous philosopher king. Rather than expecting AI corporations to regulate themselves, we should be developing durable, responsive ethical frameworks that keep dangerous technologies in check.
AI is still a morally fraught tool
I can’t believe I’m commending an AI company. Call me “misandroidic.” In the months since I criticized Wake Forest’s adoption of generative content, my concerns with artificial intelligence have only grown.
I don’t completely avoid AI, but I strive to distance myself from its temptations. I deleted my ChatGPT account and stopped using AI to study for quizzes and exams. I set Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine and browser that donates to environmental efforts, as my default, and I turned off automatic “AI overviews” on my searches when using Google Chrome. (Follow these instructions to do the latter on your own device.)
My friends groan whenever I start my grousing, but I’m glad I’m gaining a reputation for being blunt about my anti-AI beliefs. I hope my words plant seeds. Meaningful resistance to AI will come not from any one person perfectly shunning chatbots, but from lots and lots of humans reflecting on how they can best create meaningful boundaries on technological incursions into their lives. An Ecosia search for “AI not inevitable” returns hundreds of excellent, human-written essays arguing exactly that: the AI debate will not be over until we decide that it is over.
I want to praise Wake Forest for its participation in such conversations. The university’s guidelines for academic and administrative use of AI may be broader and more supportive of generative technologies than I would prefer, but they are a first step in coming to a consensus. I was also heartened by the detailed AI policies that two of my professors included in their syllabi this semester. Our country may lack thoughtful top-down AI laws for a long time, but we can start laying the intellectual foundations for future policies right now in our nation’s classrooms.
AI companies need regulation. They need it now, and they will continue needing it for the foreseeable future. While Anthropic’s ethical constitution is robust and genuine, the company does not belong on a pedestal. No matter how many jazzy, serif-font, arthouse-evoking film stock color-graded commercials the corporation produces, the fact remains that Amodei and his company were more than willing to let the Defense Department wage war with their products as long as the surveillance systems gathered intelligence only on foreign countries and the lethal robots remained just “partially autonomous.”
Anthropic benefits enormously from its public image as the “good” AI organization braving the raging philosophical battles of Silicon Valley and Washington, but it, too, should be held to the highest moral standards. If James Madison wrote “The Federalist Papers” in 2026 rather than 1788, perhaps he would have argued that “if AI models and their developers were angels, no government would be necessary.” But no AI company can be an angel, not even Anthropic—and we shouldn’t expect them to be.
Miriam Fabrycky is a sophomore from Copenhagen, Denmark, majoring in politics & international affairs with minors in journalism and philosophy. She is a member of Minor Variation a capella group and Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). Outside of the newsroom, Miriam enjoys reading, hiking and listening to music.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
source
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
