Speaker 1: Dario Amida runs the three hundred and fifty billion US
Speaker 1: dollar tech company Anthropic. In January, he wrote an essay
Speaker 1: calling it the adolescence of Technology, a line he lifted
Speaker 1: from the Jodie Foster film Contact.
Speaker 2: If you should meet these vegans and wel delmented only
Speaker 2: one question to ask of them, What would it be?
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose it would be how did you do it?
Speaker 3: How did you evolve? How did you survive this technological
Speaker 3: adolescence without destroying yourself?
Speaker 2: I was always a science fiction fan as a kid,
Speaker 2: so you know, I watched this movie when when I
Speaker 2: was growing up, and just the you know, the idea
Speaker 2: pose really really seemed to fit the situation we're in
Speaker 2: with AI, where you know, we have this we're starting
Speaker 2: to get these immense powers with AI.
Speaker 1: Dario warns, the world isn't ready for AI.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a bit like a you know, a
Speaker 2: kind of teenager. You have all these new powers and abilities,
Speaker 2: mental and physical, but you know you haven't necessarily adapted
Speaker 2: to them yet, and so you know, this is I
Speaker 2: feel like this is something that we're going through.
Speaker 1: This year, Anthropic has been locked in a battle with
Speaker 1: the Pentagon over whether it's clawed chatbot can be used
Speaker 1: for mass surveillance and fully automated weapons. Now it's rival
Speaker 1: Open AI has stepped into the ring and cut its
Speaker 1: own deal with the government. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're
Speaker 1: listening to seven AM today David Rowe from the Australian
Speaker 1: Strategic Policy Institute on Tech titans, robodogs and should AI
Speaker 1: help the Pentagon fight wars. It's Monday, March nine. David,
Speaker 1: could you start by giving us a bit of background
Speaker 1: about this AI company, Anthropic, and how it ended up
Speaker 1: in such a bust up with the Pentagon.
Speaker 4: So Anthropic is one of the big three AI labs,
Speaker 4: the leading AI labs in the United States and hence
Speaker 4: the world. Anthropici, which is building very very capable AI systems,
Speaker 4: was of interest to the Pentagon. The Pentagon signed a
Speaker 4: contract under Joe Biden's administration with Anthropic for Anthropic to
Speaker 4: provide AI at a classified level, so you know, the
Speaker 4: sort of the most secret, the most elite, the most
Speaker 4: high end type of work. It's key founders, Dario Miday
Speaker 4: and his sister Daniella Amiday, put a couple of hard
Speaker 4: conditions on its arrangement with the Pentagon.
Speaker 5: And so we have said to the Department of War
Speaker 5: that we are okay with all use cases basically ninety
Speaker 5: eight or ninety nine percent of the use cases they
Speaker 5: want to do, except for two that we're concerned about.
Speaker 5: One is domestic now surveillance. Case Number two is fully
Speaker 5: autonomous weapons. This is not the partially autonomous weapons that
Speaker 5: are used in Ukraine or you know, could potentially be
Speaker 5: used in Taiwan today. This is the idea of making
Speaker 5: weapons that fire without any human involvement.
Speaker 4: When Trump took over, the Pentagon said no, we're not
Speaker 4: happy with that. We want you to agree that we
Speaker 4: can use your systems for quote, all lawful purposes.
Speaker 6: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave CEO Dario Onmaday until the
Speaker 6: end of the week to sign a document ensuring the
Speaker 6: military would have full access to the company's AI model.
Speaker 6: Officials are considering invoking the Defense Production Act to force
Speaker 6: Anthropic to do what the military wants.
Speaker 4: Anthropic thought about this for a while and then said no, sorry,
Speaker 4: we're not comfortable with this. We insist on our two conditions,
Speaker 4: and then everything went pair shape from there. One other
Speaker 4: thing that is worth noting is that Anthropic is also
Speaker 4: the least favorite of the Trump administration's AI companies.
Speaker 7: President Trump didn't wait for the five pm deadline to pass,
Speaker 7: announcing that three forty seven pm he's cutting off AI
Speaker 7: giant Anthropic, posting on truth social the United States of
Speaker 7: America will never allow a radical left walk company to
Speaker 7: dictate how our great military fights and wins wars.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump himself also announced that Anthropic could not be
Speaker 4: used by any US government agency. So we're now in
Speaker 4: a position where arguably the most capable of the US
Speaker 4: companies doing this kind of work is now effectively cut
Speaker 4: out from providing those sorts of support to US war fighters.
Speaker 1: So we then had Sam Altman from the Open AI
Speaker 1: or chat GPT step in and he kind of deal
Speaker 1: with the Pedagon.
Speaker 4: What happened after that, Yeah, So it was only a
Speaker 4: matter of days, a couple of days before OpenAI announced
Speaker 4: that it was signing this agreement the US military. What
Speaker 4: is confusing everyone is that Sam Altman says that those
Speaker 4: two conditions that Anthropic was insisting on are part of
Speaker 4: their contract with the Pentagon. So the Pentagon, having refused
Speaker 4: to agree to making exceptions for autonomous lethal strike and
Speaker 4: domestic mass surveillance. It's now agreed to those same conditions
Speaker 4: with Open AI somewhat suspicious and has not surprisingly led
Speaker 4: to a lot of skepticism in the AI community and
Speaker 4: people commenting about this. One other thing worth remembering is
Speaker 4: that the personal history kind of goes back between Altman,
Speaker 4: Ammi Day and others. It's a kind of like a
Speaker 4: big dysfunctional family tree. The whole you know, the top
Speaker 4: end of the AI community in Silicon Valley. They all
Speaker 4: know each other, they've all worked together. Well, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of kind of personal rivalry, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: in some cases personal animals between the main players. So
Speaker 4: that just sort of feeds into this sense of, you know,
Speaker 4: you've got two competing companies with potentially conflicting or different
Speaker 4: sets of values, and that this is a real kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, stand off between tech titans.
Speaker 1: David, if we could have a look at the bigger picture, now,
Speaker 1: Anthropic has these two red lines about how its technology
Speaker 1: is used. But isn't AI already being used on the
Speaker 1: battlefields in Gaza, Ukraine possibly across the Middle East right now?
Speaker 1: So could you describe for us how militaries are employing it?
Speaker 4: So at the moment. Most military uses of AI are
Speaker 4: actually about information processing and turning an ocean of data
Speaker 4: into a comprehensible picture that human operators can use to
Speaker 4: make better decisions in real time, often under huge amounts
Speaker 4: of pressure.
Speaker 8: Chasing us human vatching with your tonk doesn't it work?
Speaker 9: Are about to witness a live operation.
Speaker 4: There is some move towards automation of operations like strike operations,
Speaker 4: so the Russians, for instance, in Ukraine, are thought to
Speaker 4: be introducing more and more automation into dropping a bomb
Speaker 4: or or firing on that target.
Speaker 9: We see a Ukrainian tank moving at speed towards the factory.
Speaker 9: It's deep inside the kill zone and Russian attack drones
Speaker 9: will try to destroy it.
Speaker 4: But for the time being, using machines to decide on
Speaker 4: a target and fire on that target without any human
Speaker 4: involvement is still considered to be an ethical red line
Speaker 4: for most countries around the world for very obvious reasons.
Speaker 4: I mean, it goes to the heart of the idea
Speaker 4: of the sanctity of human life. If we start saying
Speaker 4: that we will allow non sentient, non conscious, morally unaccountable
Speaker 4: machines to make life or death decisions about human beings.
Speaker 4: That is a huge rubicon to cross. That is something
Speaker 4: that is not happening yet.
Speaker 1: So is that essentially the argument that Anthropy has for
Speaker 1: how it's technology is being used. It's all about ethics
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although interestingly, Anthropic Statement didn't actually say they were
Speaker 4: against using autonomous strike per se. They said that the
Speaker 4: technology is at the moment not good enough to do
Speaker 4: it reliably and without making mistakes. So it was very
Speaker 4: interesting that for a company that is known for its
Speaker 4: safety consciousness with AI seem to be taking a slightly
Speaker 4: flexible position on the idea of killer robots.
Speaker 1: Coming up the Frightening Future of War run by AI David,
Speaker 1: I was actually in China last year and I saw
Speaker 1: the robodogs, for example, that they've developed. Could you tell
Speaker 1: us more about some of this technology killer robots as
Speaker 1: you describe them, What is really out there on the
Speaker 1: battlefield now?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, those robodogs are fascinating because they make
Speaker 4: fantastic videos. They look amazing. How useful they actually are
Speaker 4: in battlefield situations is still pretty dubious.
Speaker 8: London Mail, the soldiers scan the skies and use handheld
Speaker 8: drone detectors.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Big revolution in warfighting, which we've seen,
Speaker 4: particularly through Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is towards aerial drones.
Speaker 8: The radio alerts us it's tracking back. The drone detector
Speaker 8: doesn't stop bleeping.
Speaker 4: So that's the big area where some form of robot
Speaker 4: is being used. Those sorts of things like land based
Speaker 4: vehicles like robotic dogs, for instance, they're not a big
Speaker 4: part of war fighting at this point. However, we're seeing
Speaker 4: less remote controlled type activities where we actually have a
Speaker 4: human operator sitting there essentially with a kind of a joystick,
Speaker 4: and we're giving more independence and autonomy to machines on
Speaker 4: the ground. Worth also noting that China is very very
Speaker 4: capable at this They are leading the world when it
Speaker 4: comes to robotics. The Russians also have learned a lot
Speaker 4: from the Ukraine War and have been making improvements on
Speaker 4: that front as well. There's also a concern that they
Speaker 4: will have lower ethical standards than democracies. So Australia, I'm
Speaker 4: pretty confident we'll stick to some of those red lines
Speaker 4: around things like automation of lethal force. I'm much less
Speaker 4: confident that China will, and I have next to no
Speaker 4: confidence that Russia will, so I guess the big strategic
Speaker 4: peril here is that our standards are forced to start
Speaker 4: to slip, even in democracies because there is pressure from
Speaker 4: our adversaries. That means that we risk not being able
Speaker 4: to keep up in a battlefield scenario. If you take
Speaker 4: humans out of the loop entirely, you can operate at
Speaker 4: a much, much faster pace, and one of the big
Speaker 4: concerns is that there will just be a slippery slope
Speaker 4: that we all gradually have to go down in order
Speaker 4: to keep up in a war situation.
Speaker 1: David, it's not only Ukraine and China, it's also Iran.
Speaker 1: We're seeing how effective their drones are at the moment.
Speaker 1: But over the weekend we had Sam Oltman. He called
Speaker 1: for a debate about who should have more power over
Speaker 1: advanced to AI, whether it should be in the hands
Speaker 1: of governmental big tech. What do you think how should
Speaker 1: that debate be discussed.
Speaker 4: I would describe the Pentagon anthropic blow up as a
Speaker 4: kind of first salvo in a conversation that I suspect
Speaker 4: that we're going to be having for the rest of
Speaker 4: our lives. The difference with AI companies today is that
Speaker 4: they are making things that are entering every aspect of
Speaker 4: our lives. So we have to ask the question, do
Speaker 4: we want that kind of influence over our lives to
Speaker 4: be entirely generated by the private sector, where the government
Speaker 4: then either acts as a large customer like the military
Speaker 4: does in buying products from the private sector, or as
Speaker 4: a regulator from time to time, where the government says, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to set limits on how those products can
Speaker 4: be sold and used. Or do we think that this
Speaker 4: is such a fundamental transformation to our lives that we
Speaker 4: actually need some kind of partnership between the state and
Speaker 4: the private sector in the way this stuff is actually built,
Speaker 4: the way it's sold, the way it's integrated, and the
Speaker 4: way ultimately that is going to influence how we live
Speaker 4: our lives. My view is that AI is sufficiently transformative
Speaker 4: that we all need to have a say in how
Speaker 4: it's going to affect our lives. It can't just be
Speaker 4: a private sector product in which the government then sets
Speaker 4: some kind of laws or regulations around it. It's much
Speaker 4: bigger than that.
Speaker 1: And finally, David, how do you envisage the battlefields of
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 4: I envisage one in which machines and automation are going
Speaker 4: to play at the overwhelming majority of the roles. The
Speaker 4: question is to what extent humans remain in the loop.
Speaker 4: If it's just about technical proficiency, then I reckon within
Speaker 4: ten to twenty years there wouldn't be humans involved anymore.
Speaker 4: If we decide that it is a moral and ethical
Speaker 4: question that humans need to remain involved, then we can
Speaker 4: ensure that that's the case. But it will take an
Speaker 4: active decision on our part. Without active ethical discussion, warfare
Speaker 4: will end up being a fight between two lots of machines,
Speaker 4: and only when those machines are fully destroyed will people
Speaker 4: actually start fighting. And then follow that to its logical
Speaker 4: conclusion and we'll get back to sticks and stones. But
Speaker 4: in a nutshell, well, it will be machines fighting machines
Speaker 4: unless we insist on human involvement for moral and ethical reasons.
Speaker 1: David, thank you so much for talking to us.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, people in Katherine are assessing the
Speaker 1: damage after the town's worst flooding in twenty eight years.
Speaker 1: Homes and businesses have been inundated with water which reached
Speaker 1: as high as roof level in some areas. Locals have
Speaker 1: been evacuated to Darwin with the Bureau of Meteorology warning
Speaker 1: more rainfall is possible over the next few days, which
Speaker 1: could see the Catherine River rise even further, and the
Speaker 1: May budget will have no cash for wind or solar farms.
Speaker 1: According to reports, new spending on the renewable rollout has
Speaker 1: been halted in an attempt by the federal government to
Speaker 1: claw back savings. That's despite concerns Australia is behind on
Speaker 1: its target to reach eighty two percent green energy by
Speaker 1: twenty thirty. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.