Anthropic’s legal fight against the federal government just received support from rival players in the AI game in the form of an amicus curiae brief.
Earlier today, Anthropic filed a pair of lawsuits contesting the federal government’s legal authority to brand the AI company a “supply chain risk to national security” and prevent major firms from working with it.
The amicus brief filed afterward has 37 signatories—technically called amici because it’s an amicus brief, not a letter—identified as “engineers, researchers, scientists, and other professionals” at Google and OpenAI. Perhaps most notable among those named by Wired is Jeff Dean, who is chief scientist across all of Google, and, in his spare time, a prolific funder of other AI companies.
In high-profile cases, courts are often inundated with amicus curiae (“friend-of-the-court” in Latin) briefs, which can essentially be filed by anyone in an attempt to sway the outcome of a proceeding. Amicus brief have a reputation for being dull to read, and an interesting brief—say, one written in support of the plaintiff by the plaintiff’s business rivals—can have a major impact.
The argument in the brief is divided up into three main points, although the second two are closely related: Anthropic, the amici argue, was right to stick to its guns on its now-famous “red lines”—concerns about mass surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons—that made the federal government so incensed that it took the measure now at issue. The first point is that what the government is doing constitutes an “improper and arbitrary use of power,” in the views of the amici, and that it has “serious ramifications for our industry.”
Other amici include Grant Birkinbine, a security engineer at OpenAI, Sanjeev Dhanda, a software engineer at Google, Leo Gao, a member of the technical staff at OpenAI, Zach Parent, a forward deployed engineer at OpenAI Kathy Korevec, director of product at Google Labs, and Ian McKenzie, a research engineer at Google.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has spoken critically of the government’s Anthropic decision since early on in these events, writing on X on February 28, “To say it very clearly: I think this is a very bad decision from the [Department of War] and I hope they reverse it. If we take heat for strongly criticizing it, so be it.” Altman has acknowledged, however, that his company’s deal with the Pentagon coinciding with the explosive rupture between Anthropic and the Pentagon “looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
Source: gizmodo.com
