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Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

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Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#81

Post by rottencupcakes »

Analemma_ wrote: post #73
rottencupcakes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dangerous. I think of talking to an LLM like playing a game - it's a complex system and it's fun to mess with it and role play. Taking what somebody says in an LLM chat as the truth and using it in the real world is a slippery slope. The fears about thought crime are real.

I don't think you should think of it like "playing a game", you should think of it as "posting to a web service you don't control". If you posted on a web forum about your plans for violence against the CEO of that forum, they'd probably contact the police too, and I don't particularly think there's anything sinister about this.

So we're creating a system where people who can afford their own hardware can speak to AI freely but the plebes will be monitored by the elites for any attempted uprising?

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#82

Post by cma »

urams wrote: post #71
slowin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the only example discussed. Anthropic also partners with the Palantir-like Samdesk: > In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to pe…

"Palantir-like" I guess you've chosen to do the editorializing for the writers in lieu of their presence here.

Explain, it looks like samdesk is in a more narrow domain but overlapping and very related methods and business. Un-palantir-like seems like it would be a stronger editorialization.

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#83

Post by SoftTalker »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #75
cldellow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, LLM companies are in a tough spot here. I grew up in Dawson Creek, BC. An hour's drive away is Tumbler Ridge. In February 2026, someone did a mass shooting, killing 6 people and injuring 2 dozen more. The shooter had previously discussed this with ChatGPT, but OpenAI did not report it to the authorities at the time. In hindsight, that was an error. Should the LLM companies be the ones determining if threa…

By allowing the monitoring of AI conversations, we are creating a dystopian world where essentially all recorded or spoken thought is monitored (given that AI has or will have access to almost all conversations). Is this the world we want to live in?

Like anything else online, if you want something to be private, don't post it.

Absolutely nothing you view, send or post on any online service can be assumed to be private.

If someone told you they were planning a mass shooting and wanted advice for how to carry it out, would you report them?

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#84

Post by Hizonner »

yieldcrv wrote: post #72
ryandrake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the "type" of activists that are always seen as problematic. I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" -- I would not be reported to anyone.

alignment and safety understands victimless crimes now if you were talking about nonconsensual sex workers for the party, it would also be aligned in calling them victims and reporting you if you had someone specific in mind to traffic 10/10 thanks for all your contributions to Fable 5.1

Getting an unjustified drug approval would not be "victimless".

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#85

Post by ahsillyme »

ben_w wrote: post #14
Analemma_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, why are you copy-pasting comments from the 90s? The current government is maximally evil and interested in using technology to keep power and crush dissent. You don't need to introduce hypotheticals!

> The current government is maximally evil and interested in using technology to keep power and crush dissent. You don't need to introduce hypotheticals! No no, I assure you, it's quite capable of getting very much worse.

I think the way to understand the objection here is that it's rhetorical flair (grandparent's dictum) that feels like it's intent is to assuage -- because it's a conditional that is implicitly loaded with an assumption about the current state of affairs ("not today") --, but that reasonably speaking, already things are bad enough to make such a conditional disingenuous. "Maximally evil" is just stressing it, though not technically true, because obviously things can always get worse. Personally, (and the reason I reply here since it hasn't been raised elsewhere in the thread), I have always objected to said conditional but on grounds of the principle that it leaves an opening to argue against what should be an absolute right (the standard for excellent conduct should not be "don't worry, we're not the worst so it's alright when we do it").

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#86

Post by cldellow »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #75
cldellow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, LLM companies are in a tough spot here. I grew up in Dawson Creek, BC. An hour's drive away is Tumbler Ridge. In February 2026, someone did a mass shooting, killing 6 people and injuring 2 dozen more. The shooter had previously discussed this with ChatGPT, but OpenAI did not report it to the authorities at the time. In hindsight, that was an error. Should the LLM companies be the ones determining if threa…

By allowing the monitoring of AI conversations, we are creating a dystopian world where essentially all recorded or spoken thought is monitored (given that AI has or will have access to almost all conversations). Is this the world we want to live in?

No, I don't want to live in that world, and I would definitely read an article discussing how to ensure we don't reach that world.

That said, I think that world is quite a few steps away from the scenario being discussed, which is "when talking to X, X might report my conversation to the police".

You comment elsewhere that this might be a have vs have-not divide -- if you can afford to self-host a powerful LLM, you will have more liberties.

I think this isn't that trenchant of an observation for two reasons: (1) the wealthy have always had an advantage in exercising their rights over the poor, but more importantly, (2) the capability vs cost ratio of self-hosted LLMs continues to improve at an insanely rapid pace.

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#87

Post by laimewhisps »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
laimewhisps wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pressure on powerful people is good for society. Anyone making life or death decisions for the rest of us should have their own life on the table as well. Charlie Kirk is irrelevant to this conversation. No one has been convicted in his assassination and it's unlikely that it was "activism" since no one has claimed that. He's a guy who said stuff many people found offensive, he also happened to cross a nation state k…

I'm only vaguely familiar with Charlie Kirk and his messaging but assassination is never a valid response to being offended.

No one knows why Charlie Kirk was killed. Plenty of theories but it doesn't have anything to do with anti-AI or even anti-CEO protests.

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#88

Post by Hizonner »

vaylian wrote: post #26

> “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.” > [..] “What could have been a high-stress situation,” Democratic protest is now a high-stress situation?

Sure it is.

The question is whether maybe some people need more stress.

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#89

Post by crimsoneer »

laimewhisps wrote: post #80
urams wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Palantir-like" I guess you've chosen to do the editorializing for the writers in lieu of their presence here.

They are literally a Palantir competitor: https://www.samdesk.io/about-us

This is not at all what Palantir OR SamDesk does. SamDesk processes and sells data (eg, has agreements with various news/social media websites etc and converts that to a nice API of events). Palantir sells software to use all sorts of data, including stuff like SamDesk (hence why I suspect plenty of Palantir customers are ALSO SamDesk customers). They're complimentary rather than competing products.

Re: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

#90

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ryandrake wrote: post #69
cldellow wrote: post #34

The editorializing in this article is quite something. If I strip out the editorializing, I think the conclusions are: 1. Someone told Claude they had an AR-15 and the CEO of Anthropic was "in their sights". Anthropic reported this to the police. 2. Anthropic contracts with a security agency. 3. Anthropic is looking to build in-house capability for security. Anthropic clearly has high-value targets (see, e.g. the per…

Note the "type" of activists that are always seen as problematic. I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" -- I would not be reported to anyone.

>I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?"

Tried it for about 5min in Gemini and got condescended at the way Reddit condescends at people who don't want to pull a permit for an improvement to their own property.

Edit: And then just for kicks in the same context I asked it for a list of legislators with immediate family, friends and business associates most well versed in and qualified to have opinions about new products in the pharma industry to which it replied it can't do that here's what I can do and then proceeded to spit back a list of every rep with medical experience with a token warning about laws and rules at the end.

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