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Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

semafor.com

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Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#31

Are government agencies sending prompts to model inference APIs on remote servers? Or are they running the models in their own environment? It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation (EDIT: they’re a US corp) , would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers. Or are they baking the restrictions into the model weights?

1) Anthropic are US based, maybe you're thinking of Mistral?

2) Are government agencies sending prompts to model inference APIs on remote servers?

Of course, look up FedRAMP. Depending on the assurance level necessary, cloud services run on either cloud carve-outs in US datacenters (with various "US Person Only" rules enforced to varying degrees) or for the highest levels, in specific assured environments (AWS Secret Region for example).

3) It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation, would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers.

There's no evidence they do, it's just lawyers vs lawyers here as far as I can tell.

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation, would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers. "Foreign" to who? I interpretted your comment as foreign to the US government (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I was confused because Anthropic is a US company.

Ah my mistake. I thought they were French. I got them confused with Mistral. The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Ah yes - Mistral is the largest of the non-US, non-Chinese AI companies that I'm aware of.

> The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Very much so, I completely agree.

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#33
This feels like a hit piece by semafor. A lot of the information in there is purely false. For example, Microsoft's AI Agreemeent says (prohibits):

"...cannot use...For ongoing surveillance or real-time or near real-time identification or persistent tracking of the individual using any of their personal data, including biometric data, without the individual’s valid consent."

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#34
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation, would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers. "Foreign" to who? I interpretted your comment as foreign to the US government (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I was confused because Anthropic is a US company.

Ah my mistake. I thought they were French. I got them confused with Mistral. The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Anthropic is pretty clearly using the Häagen-Dasz approach here, call yourself Anthropic and your product Claude so you seem French. Why?

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s worrying to me that Anthropic, a foreign corporation, would even have the visibility necessary to enforce usage restrictions on US government customers. "Foreign" to who? I interpretted your comment as foreign to the US government (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I was confused because Anthropic is a US company.

Ah my mistake. I thought they were French. I got them confused with Mistral. The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Everyone spies and abuses individuals' privacy. What difference does it make? (Granted I would agree with you if Anthropic were indeed a foreign based entity, so am I contradicting myself wonderfully?)

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#36
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah my mistake. I thought they were French. I got them confused with Mistral. The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Anthropic is pretty clearly using the Häagen-Dasz approach here, call yourself Anthropic and your product Claude so you seem French. Why?

Hah, it was indeed the Claude name that had me confused :D

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#37

Very strange writing from semafor.com >For instance, an agency could pay for a subscription or negotiate a pay-per-use contract with an AI provider, only to find out that it is prohibited from using the AI model in certain ways, limiting its value. This is of course quite false. They of course know the restriction when they sign the contract.

Are you sure that every restriction that’s in the model is also spelled out in the contract? If they add new ones, do they update the contract?

The contracts will usually say “You agree to the restrictions in our TOS” with a link to that page which allows for them to update the TOS without new signatures.

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#38

Very strange writing from semafor.com >For instance, an agency could pay for a subscription or negotiate a pay-per-use contract with an AI provider, only to find out that it is prohibited from using the AI model in certain ways, limiting its value. This is of course quite false. They of course know the restriction when they sign the contract.

This whole article is weird to me.

This reads to me like:

* Some employee somewhere wanted to click the shiny Claude button in the AWS FedRamp marketplace

* Whatever USG legal team were involved said "that domestic surveillance clause doesn't work for us" and tried to redline it.

* Anthropic rejected the redline.

* Someone got mad and went to Semafor.

It's unclear that this has even really escalated prior to the article, or that Anthropic are really "taking a stand" in a major way (after all, their model is already on the Fed marketplace) - it just reads like a typical fed contract negotiation with a squeaky wheel in it somewhere.

The article is also full of other weird nonsense like:

> Traditional software isn’t like that. Once a government agency has access to Microsoft Office, it doesn’t have to worry about whether it is using Excel to keep track of weapons or pencils.

While it might not be possible to enforce them as easily, many, many shrink-wrap EULAs restrict the way in which software can be used. Almost always there is an EULA carve-out with different tier for lifesaving or safety uses (due to liability / compliance concerns) and for military uses (sometimes for ethics reasons but usually due to a desire to extract more money from those customers).

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah my mistake. I thought they were French. I got them confused with Mistral. The concern remains even if it’s a US corporation though (not government owned servers).

Anthropic is pretty clearly using the Häagen-Dasz approach here, call yourself Anthropic and your product Claude so you seem French. Why?

According to Claude, it’s named after Claude Shannon, who was American.

Re: Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

#40
post #38

Very strange writing from semafor.com >For instance, an agency could pay for a subscription or negotiate a pay-per-use contract with an AI provider, only to find out that it is prohibited from using the AI model in certain ways, limiting its value. This is of course quite false. They of course know the restriction when they sign the contract.

This whole article is weird to me. This reads to me like: * Some employee somewhere wanted to click the shiny Claude button in the AWS FedRamp marketplace * Whatever USG legal team were involved said "that domestic surveillance clause doesn't work for us" and tried to redline it. * Anthropic rejected the redline. * Someone got mad and went to Semafor. It's unclear that this has even really escalated prior to the arti…

> due to a desire to extract more money from those customers

If it gives you high priority support, I dont care, if its the same tier of support, then that's just obnoxiously greedy.

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