civet_java

Thanks for the considered response.

> I think this is a "vote with your wallet" sort of situation.

I agree a 100%.

> is the value proposition good enough that people will put up with it? As of today, the answer is unfortunately yes

I don't fully agree with you here and I think the jury is still out on that.

In any case, I look forward to seeing international markets responding to the current situation.

Aw buddy, you seem to think I'm trying to hurt you. Furthest, thing from the truth.

I think you might have had enough HN for today. Take a nap and then eat a snack if you still feel cranky. The internet and all your cloud services will still be here when you want to play next.

(Well rested you'll also be able to string together a cogent argument but we're clearly struggling with bigger things here.)

That's true, I am less familiar with the workings of cloud services than some are (as relevant as that may be in a discussion about a client that users run on their local machines). However, it sounds like you do understand how cloud services work.

In interest of educating those less informed than yourself perhaps you could share with us why the reasoned points I've brought up are incorrect by actually addressing them?

If by a "finer-toothed comb" you mean telemetry then I don't quite see it as comparable to this situation.

Telemetry is disclosed in privacy policies, it can usually be opted out of and if not that, then it can be blocked by a firewall. Steganographically fingerprinting customer's network routing when they consented to your tool reading a txt file is a different problem. Anthropic has demonstrated capability and willingness to embed arbitrary obfuscated data in their comms streams and that's a dangerous precedent to set.

There are some commentors in this thread downplaying the severity of a service provider being less than transparent about exactly what their shipped tooling does on customer's machines.

That the provider's business needs necessitate the this behaviour doesn't justify their lack of honest disclosure. That honest disclosure would render the solution to their problem useless isn't my problem. If anything, that they thought this was acceptable makes me wonder what else they're harvesting from my machine? PII?

The cynic in me can't help but feel that the state of these comments reflects less on the commentor's views of this debacle but rather their feelings about AI/Anthropic/America/what-have-you.

Copying over my comment from elsewhere in this post:

Anthopic choosing to delay their models' invevitable distillation by competitors is their prerogative.

That they choose to implement it by fingerprinting my access patterns without first disclosing is where they shit the bed. It isn't "sneaky" it's straight up sneaky (and dishonest and unscrupulous while we're at it). That this particular instance is harmless doesn't give me much comfort. Who's to say they aren't harvesting PII?

That their actions make sense for their business isn't any reason for people to accept their deceitful, customer-hostile decisions.

Anthopic choosing to delay their models' invevitable distillation by competitors is their prerogative.

That they choose to implement it by fingerprinting my access patterns without first disclosing is where they shit the bed. It isn't "sneaky" it's straight up sneaky (and dishonest and unscrupulous while we're at it). That this particular instance is harmless doesn't give me much comfort. Who's to say they aren't harvesting PII?

That their actions make sense for their business isn't any reason for people to accept their deceitful, customer-hostile decisions.

I'm not sure I understand your point. What benefits does treating social/national governence as an industry bring to society? Besides the govt funds it operations through taxation in addition to debt.

Your unstated assumption that investments in AI were private and therefore beyond question simply isn't true.

The AI industry's profits depend to a large degree vast textual corpuses that they acquired and trained on in either straight up illegal or at the least in legally murky contexts; public and private knowledge form the backbone of these enterprises. Said industry then serves AI models to customers via data centers that again off load the cost of inference to the public.

Of course, AI companies could step up pay up their fair share and people will happily treat the prerogatives of private enterprise as private. But until then I think certain quarters of society will continue to believe, rightfully so in my opinion, that AI companies are on the hook for unacknowledged debt.

Of course morality doesn't inform law so the current situation isn't illegal despite how egregious it is. But the law can only attempt to deliver justice, it can't guarantee it. Which is why open, honest, collaborative discussions are important to have exactly now.

It doesn't generate private returns but investing in your worker population definitely nets returns for the public.

Also, some might say that upending the de facto copyright regime in favour of AI companies was an altruistic gift.

Right back at ya buddy. Nothing quite like seeing a braggart humbled :)

Well, I for one hope you are horribly wrong.

And something about this train of thought aligning with just the general quality of your comments gives me hope.

I see your comments scattered across this thread with most converging on this thesis: "The US govt will regulate away the ability of US corporations and individuals to use unsanctioned AI models."

Which is a fair thesis. I've seen you counter people's predictions of how they think things will pan as a consequence. But what I'd really like to hear is what you think happens (in the US and internationally) as a consequence of such regulations?

On the other I think asking someone for a citation to their rather strong claim isn't incorrect. Digging through unstructured HN comments isn't my idea of a good time and being sent off on a treasure hunt by fellow commentors isn't why I come to this website. Collaboration is how we move forward!

Why is the grievance petty?

Well you seem to clearly be in the know. Care to share?