technocrit

A day after announcing new AI models designed for U.S. national security applications, Anthropic has appointed a national security expert, Richard Fontaine, to its long-term benefit trust.

In a statement, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said... “Richard’s expertise comes at a critical time as advanced AI capabilities increasingly intersect with national security considerations,” Amodei continued. “I’ve long believed that ensuring democratic nations maintain leadership in responsible AI development is essential for both global security and the common good.”

Fontaine, who as a trustee won’t have a financial stake in Anthropic, previously served as a foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. John McCain and was an adjunct professor at Georgetown teaching security studies. For more than six years, he led the Center for A New American Security, a national security think tank based in Washington, D.C., as its president.

Anthropic has increasingly engaged U.S. national security customers as it looks for new sources of revenue. In November, the company teamed up with Palantir and AWS, the cloud computing division of Anthropic’s major partner and investor, Amazon, to sell Anthropic’s AI to defense customers.

To be clear, Anthropic isn’t the only top AI lab going after defense contracts. OpenAI is seeking to establish a closer relationship with the U.S. Defense Department, and Meta recently revealed that it’s making its Llama models available to defense partners. Meanwhile, Google is refining a version of its Gemini AI capable of working within classified environments, and Cohere, which primarily builds AI products for businesses, is also collaborating with Palantir to deploy its AI models.

On Thursday, Anthropic unveiled specialized AI models designed for US national security customers. The company released "Claude Gov" models that were built in response to direct feedback from government clients to handle operations such as strategic planning, intelligence analysis, and operational support. The custom models reportedly already serve US national security agencies, with access restricted to those working in classified environments...

Anthropic joins other major AI companies competing for lucrative government work, reports TechCrunch. OpenAI is working to build closer ties with the US Defense Department, while Meta recently made its Llama models available to defense partners. Google is developing a version of its Gemini AI model that can operate within classified environments. Business-focused AI company Cohere is also collaborating with Palantir to deploy its models for government use.

The push into defense work represents a shift for some AI companies that previously avoided military applications. These specialized government models often require different capabilities than consumer AI tools, including the ability to process classified information and work with sensitive intelligence data without triggering safety restrictions that might block legitimate government operations.

Utah cannot stifle young people’s First Amendment rights to use social media to speak about politics, create art, discuss religion, or to hear from other users discussing those topics, EFF argued in a brief filed this week.

archive: https://archive.is/9bDI4

YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against "harmful content." The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube's automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people "how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content."

Geerling says his tutorial covered only legal self-hosting of media people already own -- no piracy tools or copyright workarounds. He said he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning popular piracy software in his videos. It's the second time YouTube has pulled a self-hosting content video from Geerling. Last October, YouTube removed his Jellyfin tutorial, though that decision was quickly reversed after appeal. This time, his appeal was denied.

According to the L.A. Police Department, the incident occurred at the end of the school day during pick up at the rear of the campus, when the driver of a green 2025 Rivian SUV reportedly struck a 15-year-old boy as he was walking in between vehicles.

The boy was pinned and possibly crushed between the Rivian and a smaller, white SUV, officials said. LAFD paramedics rushed him, along with his uninjured father who witnessed the terrible accident, to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased.

Like many American Jews, I was brought up to see Israel as infallible. Living among Palestinians taught me vital truths about the reality of the occupation.

I finished that year [his "year in Israel"] with little understanding of Israel’s occupation. While I noticed more “Arabs” (the word “Palestinians” never crossed our lips) around my settlement than in Israel proper, I remained oblivious to their reality of living under foreign military rule, with no citizenship or voting rights.

A growing segment of millennials and Gen Z are forming “anti-hierarchal” relationships with multiple partners and friends, according to a new study by the dating app Feeld.

Archive: https://archive.is/Y36Uk

In a sweeping escalation of the attack on public education, the Trump administration has embedded a nationwide private school voucher scheme in its new federal budget proposal. If passed, it will establish a universal voucher program for the first time in US history, bankrolled by an unprecedented $5 billion annual tax credit giveaway to wealthy donors.

School vouchers are schemes by which public tax dollars designed for public schools are repackaged into “scholarships” and reallocated to families for private school. They originated in the US in the 1950s as “tuition grants” to circumvent racial integration mandated following the landmark Civil Rights ruling Brown v. Board of Education.

The ramifications of Trump’s measure are no less reactionary. Public resources would be transferred from chronically underfunded schools serving the working class and poor into private, religious-based and elite institutions.

The initiative follows decades of billionaire-funded campaigns to open up the “education market.” Political Action Committees, such as the Koch brothers’ School Freedom Fund and the American Federation for Children, supported by the family of Betsy DeVos, invested hundreds of millions of dollars into backing failed ballot initiatives to enact statewide vouchers or to target the election campaigns of legislators in opposition.

The big lie is that these are grassroots parental campaigns for “choice”; they are not. Polls consistently show that voters reject vouchers when given the chance. In fact, since 1970, voters have never approved a statewide ballot measure to create or expand private school vouchers, according to the National Coalition for Public Education.

Over the last several decades, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed pharma companies to sell hundreds of drugs to patients without adequate evidence that they work and, in many cases, with clear signs that they pose a risk of serious harm.

did you know the copernican revolution actually happened bc vibes