Originally published at: Anthropic’s Fight With the Pentagon Shows How AI Could Threaten a Crucial Safeguard of Democracy
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation. In February, the United States Department of Defense threatened to designate the AI firm Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” after a dispute over the military’s use of the company’s Claude models. This designation would not…
The dispute raises a question larger than the future of one government contract. In my book Corporations and Persons: A Theory of the Firm in Democratic Society, I argue that a company’s responsibilities are owed not primarily to an administration, but to the entire democratic constitutional order.
I have previously argued that this includes a duty to resist autocratic demands. Here, I want to focus on a particularly urgent version of that responsibility: the duty to warn.
Hmmmmm…seems like you may be operating from a false premise, or at least ascribing to companies duties and responsibilities that you wish they observed.
At present, the only “duties” companies seem to acknowledge is to make more money for their CEOs and shareholders forever, doing whatever is necessary to achieve that.
Without legislation and a DOJ willing to enforce the laws there is little expectation or hope of most companies acting ethically or with regard “to the entire democratic constitutional order.”
(post deleted by author)
AI is the center of the ethical, legal and moral challenges the current generation will struggle with for the next 50 years. It’s issues are tricky and complex. They won’t be solved by the Trump or his cabinet. They are probably too difficutl for anyone in the political leadership of either party without a lot of thought and hard work. Good luck trying to solve them.
I do expect companies to act on their moral duties, and also recognize the very real pressures that make it difficult for them to do so. Their failures to act on them can lead to an understandable cynicism that they never do. But this conclusion is not only false–the widespread belief that firms only ever act for profits makes it even more difficult for business leaders to stand up morally when they need to help protect our democracy. I say this in 85,000 words if you want to read the rest of the book: https://academic.oup.com/book/60084