On Friday afternoon, Anthropic learned that the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your credit-card transactions, all of which could be cross-referenced with other details about your life. Anthropic’s leadership told Hegseth’s team that was a bridge too far, and the deal fell apart.
I’m learning that Hegseth is getting rid of analysts and trusting the Averaging Engine to find datum that are obvious but still sound insightful to people who don’t read for fun.
The longer I love the more wisdom I see in Tolkien’s notion that evil is self defeating. It is terrible for a time but not forever. Evil uses the most incompetent people for the job.
There’s another Tolkien’s notion, one expressed by Eomer, how Rohirrim don’t lie and thus are hard to deceive.
The concept of some insight, mystery, deeper knowledge in that context seems similar to lies for me.
Perhaps Hegseth’s approach and tooling are enough to be as significant as the evil that Tolkien’s characters did put some effort into defeating, not waiting till it defeats itself.