Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 551 posts

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#451

Post by cowpig »

Deegy wrote: post #320

I guess I'll take the other side of what most are arguing in this thread. Isn't it a great thing for to us to collectively allow LLM's to train on past conversations? LLM's probably won't get significantly better without this data. That said I do recognize the risk of only a handful of companies being responsible for something as important as the collective knowledge of civilization. Is the long term solution self cu…

> That said I do recognize the risk of only a handful of companies being responsible for something as important as the collective knowledge of civilization.

It's not just the risk of irresponsible behaviour (which is extremely important in a situation with so much power imbalance)

It's also just the basic properties of monopolistic markets: the smaller the number of producers, the closer the equilibrium price of the good maximizes the producers' economic surplus.

These companies operate for-profit in a market, and so they will naturally trend toward capturing as much value as they can, at the expense of everyone else.

If every business in the world depends on AI, this effectively becomes a tax on all business activity.

This is obviously not in the collective interest.

Of course, this analysis makes simplifying assumptions about the oligopoly. The reality is much worse: the whole system creates an inherent information asymmetry. Try and imagine what the "optimal" pricing strategy is for a product where the producer knows intimate details about every consumer.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#452

Post by ljosifov »

soraminazuki wrote: post #448
827a wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its incredible to me how seriously people can hold an opinion they've so clearly critically interrogated so little.

It makes sense when you see it as indoctrination than a mere opinion. Quashing critical thinking is the point. How else can you convince people to work against their own interests?

I put it to you - consider that you maybe wrong. That I indeed know what's best for me. The same way my default is that you know what's best for you. "Critical thinking" and "indoctrination" - you are on path to the dark side there. I grew up in a socialist/communist country. One of the ways in which vast majority of the population were oppressed, mis-treated etc or worse, was by them being denied agency and capability for critical thinking, for recognising their own interests, by a mechanism called "false consciousness". The ideas you expressed in your comment are of similar kind.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#453

Post by echelon »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #426
echelon wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most websites are replaced This is already happening. > Wait until smart glasses or watches with AI overtake cellphones Smartphones are crystalized perfection. It's such a peak design. The size, form factor, sensors, input/output modalities, and generalization are perfect. The reason companies are trying to supplant it is that they need to get out from under Google and Apple's control. It's not that anything is wro…

>Smartphones are crystalized perfection. Time will tell, but to me they feel like desktops did 20 years ago. The process of enshitification has turned simple tasks complicated and everyone wants a different, privacy destroying, frustrating to use "app", each of which has a slightly different UI paradigm, a mandatory subscription I've forgotten to cancel for two years straight, and a confusing name to remember. I now…

> The process of enshitification has turned simple tasks complicated and everyone wants a different, privacy destroying, frustrating to use "app", each of which has a slightly different UI paradigm, a mandatory subscription I've forgotten to cancel for two years straight, and a confusing name to remember. I now have something like 90 apps installed on my iphone, and I can only remember what something like 40 of them do.

This is because apps were never allowed to be installed like desktop software or as easy to access as websites. Developers had to cram in as much as possible and take as many permissions as possible because of how difficult Apple and Google made it.

If you could just search the web for an app, click a link, and have it instantly start working natively (sandboxed, with permissions), the world would be an amazing place.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#454

Post by const_cast »

SoftTalker wrote: post #326
const_cast wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much can the US government censor you versus companies? There's tradeoffs. The government, at least, has to abide by the constitution. Companies don't have to abide by jack shit. That means infinite censorship, searches and seizures, discrimination, you name it. We have SOME protection. Very few, but they're there. But if Uber was charging black people 0.50 cents more on average because their pricing model ha…

Yes, because race is a protected class. If they were charging wealthy people 0.50 more on average because the model showed that they don't care about price that much, they would be fine.

> Yes, because race is a protected class.

No: because Uber doesn't have to tell you how their model works and they probably don't even know.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#455

Post by rightbyte »

ghusto wrote: post #86

What about paid corporate accounts? If I'm not paying for something, I presume this is the kind of thing that's happening, so this isn't newsworthy to me. Is it also applicable for paid and paid corporate accounts?

Tell that to my Samsung TV.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#457

Post by soraminazuki »

ljosifov wrote: post #452
soraminazuki wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense when you see it as indoctrination than a mere opinion. Quashing critical thinking is the point. How else can you convince people to work against their own interests?

I put it to you - consider that you maybe wrong. That I indeed know what's best for me. The same way my default is that you know what's best for you. "Critical thinking" and "indoctrination" - you are on path to the dark side there. I grew up in a socialist/communist country. One of the ways in which vast majority of the population were oppressed, mis-treated etc or worse, was by them being denied agency and capabili…

Says the person advocating for companies to get rid of consent, the bare minimum they can do when screwing over people for profit. That's not deciding what's best for you. That's you unilaterally deciding that no one deserves consumer protection. You are trying to force on everyone what 96% of people are opposed to [1]. So don't you dare pull off that DARVO nonsense and accuse me of being an oppressive dictator.

Also in what universe are utter fantasies like "'no one wants to share their data' is just assumed" or "the defaults are always 'deny everything'" true? Tech companies are bypassing user consent all [2] the [3] time [4].

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

[2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=opt%20out

[3]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=opt%20in

[4]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=consent

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#458

Post by whilenot-dev »

tln wrote: post #444
merelysounds wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> opt-in by default Nitpicking: “opt in by default” doesn’t exist, it’s either “opt in”, or “opt out”; this is “opt out”. By definition an “opt out” setting is selected by default.

> By definition an “opt out” setting is selected by default. No, (IMO) an "opt out" setting / status is assumed/enabled without asking. So, I think this is opt-in, until Sept 28. Opt-in, whether pre-checked/pre-ticked or not, means the business asks you. GDPR requires "affirmative, opt-in consent", perhaps we use that term to mean an opt-in, not pre-ticked.

Regardless whether it's opt-in or opt-out, the business will need to confirm anything it opted for you by asking. If you don't select the opposing choice in a timely fashion, then the business assumes that it opted correctly in your interest and on your behalf.

> So, I think this is opt-in, until Sept 28.

If the business opted for consent, then you will effectively have the choice for refusal, a.k.a. opt-out.

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#459

Post by whamlastxmas »

freejazz wrote: post #347
JCM9 wrote: post #67

Not a surprise. All the major players have reached the limits of training on existing data—they’re already training on essentially the whole internet plus a bunch of content they allegedly stole (hence various lawsuits). There haven’t been any major breakthroughs in model architecture from the major players recently and thus they’re now in a battle for more data to train on. They need data, and they want YOUR data, n…

It's not alleged that they stole the content. They told the courts they pirated the materials.

Infringement, not theft :)

Re: Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

#460

Post by ljosifov »

londons_explore wrote: post #374
12ian34 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not remotely worried about leaks, hacks, or sinister usage of your data?

I would far prefer the service use my data to work better and take a few privacy risks. People die all the time from cancer or car accidents. People very rarely die from data leaks. Some countries like Sweden make people's private financial data public information - and yet their people seem happier than ever. Perhaps privacy isn't as important as we think for a good society.

In the past I have found obstacles to data sharing codified in the UK law frustrating. I'm reasonably sure some people will have died because of this, that would not have died otherwise. If they could communicate with the NHS, similarly (email, whatsapp) to how they communicate in their private and professional lives.

Within the UK NHS and UK private hospital care, these are my personal experiences.

1) Can't email my GP to pass information back-and-forth. GP withholds their email contact, I can't email them e.g. pictures of scans, or lab work reports. In theory they should have those already on their side. In practice they rarely do. The exchange of information goes sms->web link->web form->submit - for one single turn. There will be multiple turns. Most people just give up.

2) MRI scan private hospital made me jump 10 hops before sending me link, so I can download my MRI scans videos and pictures. Most people would have given up. There were several forks in the process where in retrospect could have delayed data DL even more.

3) Blood tests scheduling can't tell me back that scheduled blood test for a date failed. Apparently it's between too much to impossible for them to have my email address on record, and email me back that the test was scheduled, or the scheduling failed. And that I should re-run the process.

4) I would like to volunteer my data to benefit R&D in the NHS. I'm a user of medicinal services. I'm cognisant that all those are helping, but the process of establishing them relied on people unknown to me sharing very sensitive personal information. If it wasn't for those unknown to me people, I would be way worse off. I'd like to do the same, and be able to tell UK NHS "here are, my lab works reports, 100 GB of my DNA paid for by myself, my medical histories - take them all in, use them as you please."

In all cases vague mutterings of "data protection... GDPR..." have been relayed back as "reasons". I take it's mostly B/S. Yes there are obstacles, but the staff could work around if they wanted to. However there is a kernel of truth - it's easier for them to not try to share, it's less work and less risk, so the laws are used as a cover leaf. (in the worst case - an alibi for laziness.)

Post reply on HN