To the editor: I experienced a visceral reaction to Anita Chabria’s recent column (“The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous,’” Feb. 26). It appears the U.S. has taken yet another page out of Joseph Stalin’s playbook on the road to dictatorship, but now with far more sophistication with the help of artificial intelligence.
The key factor in the fall of the Romanov dynasty to the Bolsheviks was that angry minority group’s recognition of the quintessential value of timing and chaos. Especially in that 1917 year, their carefully orchestrated communication among railroads and telegraph systems was swift and coordinated.
AI systems today (like Claude) appear to be the ultimate tool in controlling today’s chaos and communication. Stalin didn’t have AI, but he did have his own low-tech versions of surveillance: spies, the KGB, gulags, intimidation techniques, etc. And the U.S. does too: masked ICE agents, detention centers, tear gas.
The American people, if not our legislatures, must ensure that we have rules and regulations that control the unbridled use of this powerful tool by the powerful individuals.
Darlene Pienta, San Marcos
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To the editor: If Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wants the Trump administration to understand his discomfort with President Trump’s demand that the Department of Defense be allowed to use Anthropic’s AI for “any lawful purpose,” (“Anthropic refuses to bend to Pentagon on AI safeguards,” March 3) then I suggest Amodei cite the quote often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
Amodei is smart to limit a license for the Department of Defense to specified purposes rather than broadly for “any lawful purpose.” The reason is simple: Trump’s track record — in his personal life, business career and role as president — clearly indicates that he can’t be trusted to act lawfully.
Trump recently confessed his belief that his presidential powers are restrained only by his own morality. Basically, Trump believes that his presidential actions can’t be restrained by the Constitution or any law, treaty, contractual commitment or any other framework.
And it’s precisely this flimsy moral compass that’s led him, in his personal life, to become an adjudicated sexual abuser; in his business life, to be sued thousands of times, be adjudicated a fraudster and become a convicted felon; and in his political life, to be impeached twice (so far).
If you pair Trump’s low regard for working within any legal boundaries with the broad immunity that the Supreme Court granted him last year, then Amodei is right to worry that limiting Department of Defense’s use of its AI to “any lawful purpose” is too weak a compliance standard for a federal government led by Trump.
Amodei should be commended for his courage in walking from a high-visibility, lucrative, consequential deal because it didn’t comport with his company’s mission.
Todd Piccus, Venice
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To the editor: What should Anthropic do now? Go to Europe (or Canada) where it could operate more successfully, free of the heavy and puerile impositions of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Here’s a company that prides itself on the ethical use of its products being coerced into betraying that pride by our government (“Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI after clash with Pentagon,” Feb. 27). What does this say about the ethical character of that same government?
Ken Johnson, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: If all technology companies join Anthropic and say that their products cannot be used for mass surveillance against Americans or in fully autonomous weapons operations, then Trump will have no choice but to rescind his order for U.S. government agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology. In unity there is strength, even with a forceful leader.
Richie Locasso, Hemet