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Claude is only available to people over 18 years

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Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be misunderstanding a bit. There's no forced verification. It'd be more of an RFC that gives parents the ability to communicate their underage child is using the device without revealing or verifying any further information. Or do you suspect that giving any ground will cause the ID verification and centralized behavior?

I suspect that communicating a flag value of boolean true/false that "this computer is in use by a minor" from the operating system (via browser or app) to a remote SaaS service like something run by Anthropic will be seen as insufficient by the SaaS, so they'll necessitate ID-scan/live-selfie verification anyways . Meanwhile, the age flag in the operating system will be used for other forms of authoritarian control.…

That's a valid take. The issue I'm wrestling with is the inevitable attempts to point a finger at who is responsible when bad things happen. If you claim it is on the tech companies to know if a child is online, then they will take the safest path for them by forcing ID verification in independent adhoc manners. This is what we are seeing now, and to me this is the worst situation. If you shift the responsibility more to the parents (this child was using a device that didn't send the `PARENT_CONTROL` flag, therefore we assumed they were an adult) it's a completely different conversation. Furthermore, if something happens to a child AND it's obvious from traffic logs that the platform willingly knew a child was being talked to, then that is also a completely different situation than the first.

Leaving it all completely deregulated and/or letting platforms implement it themselves to varying levels of success and personal invasion feels like the worst option to me.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#102
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are naive if you think they can’t infer almost everything about median user already.

They certainly can't infer my full name and address from what I've used Claude for in the past, but if I'm forced to hand over my ID and I do, then they would.

Haven't they reported "anonymous" users before to the police?

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And China controls AI too. It's just that their idea of "safety" is "ideological safety", and their idea of "alignment" is "alignment to the party line". They're cool with open weight AIs being released. As long as those AIs only ever say good things about CCP, and don't mention certain concentration camps or brutally suppressed protests.

I don't disagree with you on what is the top-down political priority there, but thankfully the architecture of an open weights model released in .safetensors format allows for 3rd parties to "uncensor" it. There's at least 8 different CN originated models now that after running through heretic and a few other methods will score 0 refusals on this data set of prompts: https://huggingface.co/datasets/mlabonne/harmful_b…

Yeah, it's good that open weights models can have their "filters" busted fairly reliably. Unlike whatever bone Anthropic has to pick with the very idea of biology.

But that's a consequence of how the technology works - not a consequence of China not being authoritarian about AI. They're just authoritarian about AI in different ways.

Not like they dodged the "ID verification" bullshit either. They were way ahead of the western countries there. It's vile - seeing this sad excuse of "think of the children" abused to invade privacy and strip freedoms over and over and over and over again.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#104

Good that we have Chinese models now, we can host anywhere and use as much as we like without age verification. Also, what's the reason banning minors? Is AI bad for mental health? If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?

> Is AI bad for mental health?

I think there’s reasonable evidence that when used incorrectly, yes.

> If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?

It’s not that AI the concept is harmful, it’s using it to diagnose/treat personal problems, mental issues etc. Using it to crunch some data or write some code for you isn’t really the same.

I also think there’s a meaningful difference using AI in education and in the workplace. When you get a writing assignment in a class the primary purpose isn’t the words, it’s you having learned about the topic and how to express yourself. And lots of students are using AI to skip that part entirely.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#105
post #83

I can understand the concerns but at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I got proper internet access when I was 12 and that is how I taught myself how to program.

And children will still have access to the internet and resources to teach themselves how to program.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#106

I once heard someone suggest that this should be on the OS level and I'm slowly coming around to the idea. There should be some kind of OS level flag that can easily broadcast to products that a child is using the device. No ID verification required, the parent is responsible for setting it, and all downstream applications are regulated to respect it, If applicable to the product. This removes the incredibly invasive…

I firmly believe that tech companies being responsible for parenting our children is a deeply misguided response to a failing society and overworked parenting generations. I benefitted greatly from early access to computers and the full scale of their capabilities. It was a constant issue in my family limiting screen time, and who knows what the exact rules should be for everyone. For me it was a dynamic ruleset I wa…

Having had a similar upbringing, I strongly agree. I have a hard time not lashing out at people that fall into this trap given how important that early access to computers ended up being to achieving my dreams.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#107

Claude Executive: Damn, we hardly know who our users are, can't we just force them to say their full name or ban them? Claude Product Manager: No, that'll piss people off too much, and sadly we can't just ask for ID either... Claude Executive: There must be some way we can force people to link their government IDs with our platform so our analytics get better and more accurate? Claude Product Manager: We could limit…

>Damn, we hardly know who our users are No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.

I would say misuse AI for mental health advice. It's already difficult to find good mental health professionals.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parody is funny, but in reality, it's almost certainly the reverse: the legal department terrified of regulatory exposure, not marketing looking for IDs. Laws like COPPA in the US, the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, and EU GDPR carry statutory penalties of over $50,000 per violation if minor data or chat sessions are mishandled without explicit parental consent. For an enterprise and developer-focused company li…

> if minor data or chat sessions are mishandled without explicit parental consent I know this isn't what you meant, but I can't help but laugh at the thought of a parent consenting: "I consent to the mishandling of my child's data" As to your actual point, yes, I assume they are trying to reduce liability, especially if they're gearing up to an IPO.

Since I see so many small kids with FB, Insta and TikTok accounts made for them by their parents - I find "I consent to the mishandling of my child's data" only funny in a very dark way.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#110
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Damn, we hardly know who our users are No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.

I would say misuse AI for mental health advice. It's already difficult to find good mental health professionals.

Those two sentences seem to be a non-sequitor. Unavailability is one reason people would turn to AI. Ease of access is another.
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