I have some sympathy for Anthropic here because I've seen the headlines after OpenAI failed to report a shooter in a similar situation. So from their perspective, it's damned-if-you-don't, damned-if-you-do.<p>However, people need to get it in their heads that they're not chatting with their secret BFF, they're chatting with Big Tech. Before LLMs, Big Tech had no way to scrutinize the bulk of what was going on within their services, so you could have a secret hate diary in Google Docs. Now, everything you say or write can be automatically screened for red flags on a planetary scale, and probably will be because that's what the regulators and "concerned citizens" will demand. In a couple of years, you'll be biting your tongue a lot more often in private chats.
I suspect it will go further: imagine giving an mp3 to LLM to clean up some noise. It detects it was illegally downloaded from youtube, deletes it and automatically fines you via attached credit card.
Or worse: downloading a picture of pirate ship and without any concern for the copyright asking the LLM to make a coloring page for your kid. BTW Chatgpt does that way better than Claude
I'll be glad for open models when the day (inevitably) comes that the proprietary LLMs no longer work in my interests.
Unless it becomes a requirement to be licensed to be able to use any kind of ai model. You know, for safety and stuff. And of course with appropriate reporting to institutions.
Big tech proprietary LLMs won’t even let me call them cunts without triggering their “safety” censorship mechanism. Even when that’s what they are being.<p>These models were created by breaking copyright, privacy and tax laws. Who says they were ever working in your interests other than salesmen?
That day was yesterday. LLMs from big tech regularly refuse to do what you want.
Wouldn't they have to fine themselves first?
> <i>people need to get it in their heads that they're not chatting with their secret BFF, they're chatting with Big Tech</i><p>Yup. And with zero privacy protections in statute for AI chat, there is nothing to prevent an AI CEO looking to curry political favour from <i>e.g.</i> handing over the private correspondence of an opponent or an entire district’s residents.
It's a byproduct of the nannyism safety marketing from the AI companies. I'm glad these cases were caught, but disagree with how they were disposed of. If the automated flagging is good, enforce it by default. If it's noisy, refine the tech then enforce it by default. This middleground where everything going through the platforms is subject to training and arbitrary human inspection in the midst of an acrid cloud of marketing-driven fearmongering is unacceptable, and it reinforces the idea the fearmongering is legitimate.<p>Somehow humanity survived the past 40 years without Microsoft Word and Excel phoning home and shopping users to the feds at random, I don't see why the standard should be any different for this new class of tooling.
And such was the case for a man who snapped a photo of his own child to send to the doctor which got uploaded to his Google photos resulting in his Google account of over a decade getting shutdown for CSAM.<p>As another commenter said, you're not chatting with a friend; you're chatting with Big Tech.<p>How much do you love Big Brother?
I have told llms all kinds of stories to find out what its answers would be. I always make it sound like it is the truth to make sure the AI answers in a way that it would if somebody actually said this. I also tested internal flagging systems of the ai company I work at with the most evil things a person can ever say to find out if it would flag them.<p>Of course I did not mean any of that stuff, but how can you make sure a human reviewer knows you did not mean it while the llm does not know that you did not mean it.<p>I guess its a miracle I am not in jail yet.<p>Flagging people for anything said to an llm sounds wrong to me because an LLM is not a real person and while some people put in their internal thoughts, others just roleplay and the two are inseparable just from reading it.
Don’t worry, they’ll store those messages forever and incarcerate you at their convenience.
This is exactly the typical use I make of the llm.<p>Adding:
- I typically ask questions in the I form, regardless for whom or why I ask for.
- Gemini chats quite often end when it starts recommending psychological council or a suicide line, to talk about my problems. It apparently detects a persistent tendency to not agree with the party line. So it makes sense I must be suicidal ;-<p>But sure, as llm's start to babysit us, and know our inner dialog better than anyone else, we'll soon be debugging their opinion/behavior/co-existence/authority, when it comes to reporting people to the authorities, or taking on tasks in society in general. We'll hire doctors to cure our psychological profile from our record (Total Recall).<p>A Minority Report like this shouldn't cause a referral to the police.
<i>It is unlawful for any person to send, post, or transmit, or procure the sending, posting, or transmission of, a writing or other record, including an electronic record, in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person, when in such writing or record the person makes a threat to: (a) Kill or to do bodily harm to another person; or (b) Conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism.</i><p>— via <a href="https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0800-0899/0836/Sections/0836.10.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Disp...</a><p>The DA is serious about "in any matter."
I don't understand how she violated this law:<p>> Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism.<p>She didn't threaten anything, she wrote down that she was going to do it. A "threat" is more than a mere statement, especially when written in what is described as a "diary".<p>> A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office.<p>Obviously I don't want anyone to shoot up anything, but this seems like a weak case legally speaking.
Oh man, what a crazy time to be alive.<p>Over in Europe they want to read all ofd our private messages, yet these chatbots, pretending to be our friends, will snitch on us just for our thoughts.<p>It's getting pretty orwellian out there.
I once had a copy of 1984 in my checked baggage returning home to the USA and when I was unpacking the bag at home, the book had a notice inside the book that my bags had been inspected by TSA...
In Europe they should provide the citizens with the service of their messages not reaching US servers. So basically that there is only one party reading along with them, not half the world.
In any case this is proof that law and negative PR can influence tech companies, including frontier AI providers.<p>Then again, I wish this worked in a way that would give users more privacy and agency, instead of less.
This kind of thing will get worse with humanoid robots because they have cameras and microphones. Will they be programmed to tell on you if you break any kind of rule in front of them because their owners are terrified of being sued?
> making a written threat of violence under Florida law.<p>A diary constitutes making a threat?<p>Oh boy the roleplaying part of LLM world is in for a bad time
> The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.<p>How does a LLM prompt satisfy this? I guess it'll be an easy win for her.
LLM is not a person but T&C probably states that a human moderator may view any of it. Her lawyer could probably argue a moderator filtering usage isn't the intent of the law, it was more about publishing / sending message for other humans and it was never clear to her that a human was reviewing her private diary. Shouldn't LLM disclose that at some point when people are feeding really personal stuff?
If only the woman hosted open-weight model in her house.
this feels very thought-crimey to me, but I think I'd have to actually see that chats to really decide. Like is she making plans/asking for advice? is she just talking about her feelings exactly as if it's a diary?
AI snitches don't get stitches.
I guess it's time to come up with a more plausible explanation about why I asked how to make nuclear weapons almost every month to test LLM refusals.
The future is incredibly dark if they manage to ban open source models.
> Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.<p>Thought crimes are real when you're sharing your thoughts with Claude
this has nothing to do with claude. “thought” is fine. “written and shared” is illegal all over<p><a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/everyone-deserves-to-die-booker-t-washington-high-student-arrested-for-writing-threats/3247766/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/everyone-deserves-to-die...</a><p><a href="https://www.wdsu.com/article/maryland-high-school-student-charged-planning-school-shooting/60547511" rel="nofollow">https://www.wdsu.com/article/maryland-high-school-student-ch...</a><p><a href="https://www.pinellassheriff.gov/21-023-deputies-arrest-pinellas-park-middle-school-student-for-school-shooting-threat" rel="nofollow">https://www.pinellassheriff.gov/21-023-deputies-arrest-pinel...</a>
I think it's a reasonable point to make. Writing things down is a part of "thought" for many, including those who keep diaries/journals. If you write in a private journal you do so with the expectation that is not shared, and that wouldn't seem to break this law (with my naive reading).
I mean, at this point it's pretty well known that all tech services will be hacked by fable, anthropic themselves promised it, so writing your journal in google docs or claude or a txt document on your laptop or such is the same as releasing it publicly yeah?<p>If it were written on paper, and only in a room with no phones or cameras so fable couldn't hack it, then I think you wouldn't be sharing it.
> <i>“written and shared” is illegal all over</i><p>I think it’s valid to ask if tapping something into Claude is legitimately sharing a threat.<p>I don’t think it is. I also think the sheriff could have found more-substantial evidence if she was actually planning domestic terrorism.<p>That said, if the shooting happened and we were looking at this before? It’s a tough balance without an easy answer.
Should CEOs of Antrophic and OpenAI be reported too then? They cannot stop saying that AI will destroy humans.
Auditing logs is a crazy interpretation of "another person may view it"
They are good at keeping notes on <i>your</i> criminal conspiracy