“It is difficult to get [an AI] to [omit words, which are counted as tokens], when [it’s company’s] paycheck depends on [it] not [omitting words].”

> we're not talking about a product that kills its users

Yeah, it just pushes the ones with the tendency to do it themselves.

Are you being sardonic, or can you seriously not tell the difference in harm between smoking cigarettes and Claude?

I genuinely don't understand how you can survive in the world with a risk assessment system this damaged.

"Think of the kids!" OK but the impact of this technology shouldn't be underestimated and one doesn't only have to read up on the extreme ends. From personal experience, have you ever "chatted" with a model outside of technical/work related stuff? Both Anthropic as well as OpenAI models have been overstepping personal (user) boundaries for years now. There are multiple reasons for why Google hasn't capitalized on the transformer much earlier..

I'm neither a proponent of the recent Zuckerberg maneuver to "protect the children!" nor of the EU based zero-knowledge proof track, but the people in those companies need to be kept accountable.

The new Claude availability constraints seem to me then like a (late) hedge against any major litigations on that front..

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=AI-induced_psycho...

They're absolutely doing this as a hedge against litigation, and given the trillion dollar lawsuits flying around, it's hard for me to blame them. Regulation by litigation rather than law creates ambiguous legal precedents that make it much harder to do business safely. That's why the most economically successful countries in the world tend to have the strongest rule of law.

The actual root cause of this is our culture moving away from the idea that individuals and families should be free to make these sorts of decisions, and instead believing that heavy-handed authoritarian governments should dictate those choices to us instead.

I actually disagree, I think the problem is that heavy-handed companies have been dictating choices to us and our children, in contradiction to existing laws, and people are finally saying enough, these companies need to follow the laws.

The problem is that part of "the people" that these new digital world corporations are dictating to... is 'our governments'.

I mean, the big ones are more powerful than most of the world's countries. And in ways incredibly influential.

I got my Claude (client, not Code) to behave better by adding “I’d prefer answers to be succinct as possible—bordering on gruff, even. When I want more depth or explanation, I’ll ask.” to its settings literally this morning.

It made it write more like a dev than a marketing agent.

Yes.

The right wing doesn’t want to run the government, they want to occupy it so it doesn’t run except to enrich themselves.

What if I told you there’s an existing protocol for doing Really Simple Syndication?

Sorry, we're on the wrong timeline. The worse one, in fact.

sounds like something only nerds would be aware of

It can’t be destroying evidence if there’s no case or charge being pressed for which that material would be evidence.

“Entering the country while in possession of a device storing binary data” isn’t a crime.

> It can’t be destroying evidence if there’s no case or charge being pressed for which that material would be evidence.

(IAAL, not legal advice, consult your own lawyer)

Where’d you get that idea? That’s not the law. As soon as there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, and the law enforcement encounter occurs, that’s the threshold for when preservation of evidence begins. It doesn’t matter whether it might not have ultimately resulted in a criminal charge. You cannot intentionally interfere with a lawful investigation, in any way, full stop.

Reasonable suspicion of what though? Is them just being suspicious by default "reasonable"?

What articulable crime is the suspect alleged to have committed?

It’s a subject of debate. CBP stated it was possession of CSAM. Defendant claims it’s a pretext and that CBP was really investigating his ties with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.

But it doesn’t really matter in this case. You cannot interfere with a lawful investigation, full stop. It’s not clear to me that even if the search was unlawful that the defendant will be held not guilty of the underlying tampering/destruction charge, since we already have a mechanism to suppress evidence obtained unlawfully.

There was no reasonable suspicion in this case and definitely not of the pretext they used (child porn).

In the case of a border search it’s when the encounter begins; no reasonable suspicion is needed.

Updating my initial statement: to search someone’s phone at the border, the government needs reasonable suspicion that the person has committed or is planning to commit a crime.

It’s been pretty flimsy armor lately.

“We’re sorry, Carol.”

There is no Epimemetic Division.