In the Anthropic-Pentagon battle, the real autonomous weapon was PR

In Silicon Valley’s quest to win hearts and minds over its artificial intelligence innovations, the spiraling public spat between Anthropic and its government client, the Pentagon, offers a revealing look at how public relations, and not AI, has become the real weapon of note.

A recent Washington Post opinion piece claimed that “standing up to unreasonable and ethically challenging requests from the government ought to be commonplace in a free country. That’s what the artificial intelligence powerhouse Anthropic did last week.”