AI vs. the Pentagon: killer robots, mass surveillance, and red lines

Anthropic is refusing to accept new Pentagon contract terms that would remove safety restrictions (guardrails, the built-in limits on what an AI model will do) from its AI models, which would allow uses like mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous lethal weapons (weapons that can select and fire at targets without human control). Despite pressure from the Pentagon, including threats to label Anthropic a supply chain risk (a designation suggesting it poses a national security threat), CEO Dario Amodei says the company will not compromise on these ethical boundaries, while competitors OpenAI and xAI have reportedly agreed to the terms.