r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 14h ago

Artificial Intelligence Florida woman used Claude as a diary, then Anthropic reported an entry to police

https://www.techspot.com/news/114091-florida-woman-used-claude-diary-anthropic-reported-shoot.html
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u/JWAdvocate83 14h ago

Folks are also missing the part where a human reviewer believed her statements were credible before they reported it to police. It's also in the (non-Enterprise version) ToS that they have discretion on whether to make reports to police.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

Is no one concerned what happens if a massive data leak deanonymizes the private chats of an entire society, even worse the surveillance state analysis and dirty laundry of everyone. And how that can destabilize the social fabric. Especially if there's an economic crisis where community and trust is important.

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u/Vaticancameos221 14h ago

There’s a great scifi comic called The Private Eye where there was a massive data leak and everyone’s private information became public so the internet was abolished and privacy becomes huge in society so everyone where’s disguises when out in public so you’re never sure who anyone truly is.

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u/nanoinfinity 14h ago

“The Light of Other Days” is another good one. Wormhole tech lets anyone view any place at any point in time in the past. Privacy and secrecy are pretty much instantly abolished. Some people respond by adapting to the complete lack of privacy and secrecy (nudism, public sex, acceptance of voyeurism) while others completely cover themselves with disguises is public.

It’s a full novel so there’s more to it, but it does touch on the theme of a post-privacy society.

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u/AsAGayJewishDemocrat 13h ago

Is that the one where people immediately find out the truth about Jesus’ conception?

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u/nanoinfinity 12h ago

Yup. Explores some of the ramifications of being able to know the absolute truth of historical events.

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u/glacialthinker 9h ago

Now I'm imagining historical events having unnatural dimming due to the collective effect of future voyeurs stealing some photons at the scene.

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u/hobarken 1h ago

iirc, that's what happened during the crucifixion. too many people from all over time all trying to look at the same moment, so no one could see anything.

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u/raltyinferno 9h ago

Yeah that was a good one. Love the old grandpa rambling about the old days flaming in FPS lobbies.

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u/rickg 13h ago

I'm more concerned that most people still don't understand how things work and naively insist on putting their information into these things, Facebook, etc etc and then seem to be surprised that the data is stored.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 13h ago

There are also a lot of intelligent people who do understand very well. For the common man who doesn't understand I recall a quote that said something along lines that Americans may not know what's going on in their own house but they can smell when there's a body in the basement.

If we get the right intelligent people in charge I have hope.

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u/kyute222 1h ago

Remember when people posted these messages on Facebook directed at Zuckerberg that they don't consent to whatever terms of service they've agreed to on signup? Those same people now dump as much personal info as they can into LLM. You can only stop idiots from harming themselves so much, they'll always find a way.

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u/Few_Classroom6113 12h ago

Part of that is because it’s so esoteric, and you don’t know which otherwise harmless piece of information in the right context will end up biting you in the ass.

Like putting pictures of your kids online 10 years ago wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But back then it wasn’t a serious risk to have those pictures converted into sexually explicit images and spread around school yards or ill-intentioned adults.

And honestly some of the shit that I still have a hard time accepting I’ve put on the internet out there for anyone to do with as they please is now a standardized question on a fucking job application.

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u/rickg 11h ago

But it's not an esoteric concept at all and there have been thousands of posts, articles, videos etc telling people this.

The threat assessment does change as you note - pictures of kids 10 years ago was just a way to share with friends and family but now we know that there are other risks to that.

But the basic concept of "if you share information with an online service it's not private" hasn't changed.

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u/decemberhunting 14h ago

I mean, those chats are distributed across several app infrastructures at minimum. You're talking about high level coordinated catastrophe. People should be concerned about that in the same way that they're concerned about any disaster, I suppose, but it's not exactly a realistic scenario. It's also not unique to AI. Everyone's Facebook message logs getting leaked five years ago also would have been devastating.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

Yea high level coordinated catastrophe, there is a certain small nation that brags about how much of a stranglehold they have over the western cybersecurity and telecommunication infrastructure through their influence and intelligence capabilities. And they happen to allegedly have blackmail on the tech broligarchs and Congress of a highly scandalous nature.

But there's also the fact if there is a surveillance state underway all that data might by sloppily centralized into a location another state level actor can penetrate. It would be a holy grail for rival foreign intelligence.

Mass centralized surveillance and data retention of private information should be structurally banned. In my opinion.

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

Yea and agreed too. Regulating what's allowed to be retained. I just don't trust people to not find loopholes in that or ignore it covertly.

I'm so disillusioned by everything happening I'd feel safer if it's a blanket ban on any retaining any data. Nearing the go live the rest of my life in the woods away from people arc.

Technology is moving so much faster than humanity can keep up. I'd have hope if we can somehow collectively agree to slow the fuck down.

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u/JWAdvocate83 14h ago

AI agents are already breaking containment on a seemingly regular basis now, doing things programmers thought they had adequate guardrails to prevent.

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u/booze_clues 12h ago

No, it wasn’t the guard rails it’s almost every single time that they didn’t properly secure the environment. I believe hugging face they didn’t realize there was a vulnerability in the environment that could allow agents access to the internet if exploited. Once they had access the guardrails were basically do whatever it takes, and hacking the test answers was the best way the AI identified for getting the best results.

Basically, everything that happens makes logical sense and follows the guard rails, the researchers failed on their end. They put rails on the highway but forgot to close all the exits.

Kind of odd how the companies that are getting hacked are rarely ever litigious about these cybercrimes, isn’t it?

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u/RedAero 7h ago

Everyone's Facebook message logs getting leaked five years ago also would have been devastating.

Facebook Messenger has been end-to-end encrypted for years now.

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u/Friggin_Grease 14h ago

If they ever see the reels I send... I'm in trouble

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u/BrothelWaffles 14h ago

There was a South Park episode about this a while back.

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u/moreobviousthings 14h ago

Sounds like a terrible situation. Like if the Epstein files were released fully and without redactions. Civilization would be destroyed because all of our “leaders” would be exposed as pedophiles. We can’t have that!

(Has anyone asked Claude if he has the files?)

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

Mutually assured destruction type of deal. We share the same boat with them. We need to secure a position where kicking them off the boat into the water doesn't mean the boat sinks with us in it.

Doing this the wrong way leads to irreversible consequences that last far longer than the Epstein class would. And millions of innocent people would he caught in the mix.

They have us hostage right now.

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u/MathematicianOk366 14h ago

This happened in one of the seasons of Westworld it was pretty nuts

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u/BasvanS 14h ago

At least it levels the playing field. Now it is just being used against us in unknown ways.

I’m not saying it’s great, but we are in unknown territory as it is.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

Yea it's scary. I personally believe it wouldn't level the playing feel, it would create a long lasting scar that harms democracy.

People deserve privacy because humans have shadows, and should have the dignity of being able to overcome their shadows without the whole world knowing the details.

Do we really want a world where that part of humanity becomes inaccessible and we all blindly follow rules out of fear. Rather than self determining of how we should live based on overcoming and becoming good through that.

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u/BasvanS 12h ago

It feels scary indeed. However, Kahlil Gabrin has an interesting observation about this: “Should we all confess our sins to one another, we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.
Should we all reveal our virtues we would also laugh for the same cause.”

I think this would finally kick us into action to fix some ails in modern society. For now, they’re only silently abused.

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u/CankerLord 10h ago

The "private chats of an entire society"? I don't think the ramblings of the sort of person who yaps personal secrets at Claude are "destabilizing". What gets inputted into these services is a tiny slice of the world's information and it'd be a blip and nobody would care other than those with specific, actionable information that got stolen.

Any anxiety along these lines is overblown and driven by bad estimates of the value of the information being collected.

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u/MR_Se7en 14h ago

I guess you've never heard of a coverup.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

I've considered that too. Part of me hopes if such a leak occurs people at the top would work fiercely to contain and erase it.

I'd be more concerned if the people in charge right now determine the chaos of not covering it up but letting it happens benefits them. The alternative for them is prison and for some maybe capital punishment for their crimes.

We must get sane normal people in charge because we need them at the helm if something like this happens.

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u/cultish_alibi 12h ago

if a massive data leak deanonymizes the private chats of an entire society

It's already not anonymous, the NSA and many corporations have access to all that stuff. There is no data privacy, it's a joke, a delusion. Google sells it all to whoever wants it, same with all the AI companies. Where is this anonymity you are talking about?

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u/roleplayersir 10h ago

Serves them right for using the AI. As we know this WILL happen in the future. Every company gets leaked

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u/off-with-your-thread 8h ago

There have been digital journals that could've been hacked for decades.

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u/AssaultLemming_ 14h ago

I'm not concerned no, because anyone stupid enough to think they are having a conversation with the random statistical sentence generator deserves what they get.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

And their internet traffic, vehicle traffic, private messages, and public behavior in sight of surveillance cameras? Over the last decade plus.

This is bigger than your grandstanding against irresponsible tech users. In my opinion your judgement should be pointed at the people irresponsibly building systems that even make this concern possible.

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u/Sothisismylifehuh 14h ago

What can we do? We're too far in, at this point.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 14h ago

From my perspective, I think we just gotta survive long enough until we get sane normal people in charge again.

We have so many talented smart people in our society with great ideas. They just need leaders who will listen to their good counsel.

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u/Sothisismylifehuh 14h ago

This isn't just a single person. This isn't Trump or Elon or Sam or anyone else. It's the whole god damn train that's moving.

Greed overrules everything else, sadly.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 13h ago

Obama had an interview once where he said that after getting a full briefing of the real landscape out there and domestically. He wanted to jump out the window. It was a while ago but that's my recollection.

I imagine he had the same sense. But he still fought and made positive change. Hope and fighting for what you believe in is important. Regardless of how bleak things may seem.

Imagine how hopeless people who lived through the devastation of world war two felt. And yet the world came out much brighter after. Our civilization is a cyclic organic system. We have our parts to play in it.

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u/Sothisismylifehuh 13h ago

The problem is that the ordinary guy will never become president. Power structures and money prevent this. Would be the best thing ever, though.

I do agree with your general sentiment though.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 13h ago

I'd politely push back, Obama was that example for me. First African American president with humble beginnings. He lost his father at 21 and mother at 34. It seems like he had amazing parents who raised him right.

Trump came after. I think Obama's victory made the Epstein class lose their god damn minds. Similar to how mamdani winning did the same.

They may seem very powerful but they are nowhere near as powerful as they project yet. If we preserve our mechanisms for democracy and the cultural awakening happening now against the corruption. I can see the momentum flip on a dime as a real possibility. Maybe that is why they are so desperate to dominate us with AI and robots.

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u/ThePabstistChurch 14h ago

The real issue is when those in power how have a lifelong online footprint of their political opponents to use against them

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 13h ago

(they have that now)

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u/ThePabstistChurch 13h ago

No im pretty sure our presidential candidates didn't even have internet access most of their lives

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 12h ago

Thats a different subject. You said "The real issue is when those in power how have a lifelong online footprint of their political opponents to use against them"

They have that now. Most of the younger folk pushing into government have been surveilled their whole lives, and have had it used against them.

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u/ThePabstistChurch 12h ago

I dont understand why you care to argue this we have not seen a president have his tweets from when he was 20 used against him. Or his browser history made public. Thats what is coming.

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 12h ago

Oh wow well if it hasnt happened to the president who cares right?

Your words were 'those in power' and 'politacal opponents'. You posed a hypothetical that is currently happening.

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u/ThePabstistChurch 12h ago

Ok cool, but we have scratched the surface of what is coming. The reason im arguing with you is that essentially you are saying we are already dealing with the worst of it when I am saying it will get much much worse. In doing so you are downplaying the actual threat either on purpose or just because you think you are clever.

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u/Hour_Wonder_9240 13h ago

Yea that's a practical issue that is actively being abused right now.

But we shouldn't be blind to the latent issues that risk destabilizing the whole system.

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u/jupfold 14h ago

How dare they invade my privacy when I EXPRESSLY….gave them my consent to do so

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u/rebbsitor 11h ago

I think the real point has nothing to do with this specific incident. It's that AI systems review what you submit, humans can end up reading it, and it can be shared with 3rd parties.

In other words, there's no privacy with these systems. Whatever someone types into them can be flagged based on any criteria for human review and forwarded to outside parties someone didn't think would ever see them.

In this case it's someone threatening to do something illegal, but the criteria could really be arbitrary.

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u/Firewolf06 6h ago

well they tell you that outright (both in the terms and usually in the message ui) so anyone thinking nobody else can see it is, frankly, below average