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/happyflappypancakes 13h ago

Harvesting and selling. We should be seeing some of that money. Its like a farm owner reaping all the rewards of the harvest but not paying his laborers. Except in thhis case the laborers alao generate the crop.

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u/LordofDsnuts 13h ago

If you are using a free service on the internet you are the product.

If you are using a paid service on the internet you may still be the product to subsidize costs or increase profits.

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u/Amon7777 13h ago

We may be reaching a point where we aren’t even the product but a resource to be used. The data we create just by writing this here on Reddit isn’t linked to us as the product, but is adding to the product that Reddit can sell. For AI companies, that data is what they’re buying to train and enhance their products.

We are essentially working for Reddit (and any social media that is data harvested to be clear), meaning Reddit is the product, not us.

It should then be double depressing that humans aren’t even that valuable anymore.

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u/20_mile 12h ago

AI companies

Unrelated to what you were saying specifically, the AI oligarchs have a groupchat going where they are betting who will be the world's first person to be the sole employee / owner of a billion dollar company.

People, workers, are irrelevant now. One guy can build a billion dollar company by himself.

Check out the recent Impolitic with John Heilemann podcast episode with Naomi Klein where they discuss her new book.

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u/miguelito_loveless 10h ago

I want to keep thinking of this realistically after getting more involved in the IT world and finding that most of the people who supposedly work in technical jobs appear to spend almost all their time solving scheduling/dumb (very dumb) logistical problems with very little left for tech stuff. Technical problem-solving is left to a very few specialist gurus who no one thanks nearly enough. People want to pretend they have jobs they don't actually have, and their employers are completely fine with that.

That "one guy" will not have built his billion-dollar company. He MAY have done the initial planning but then just held on tight to ride the engine of other people deciding on details and actually implementing pretty much every aspect of his enterprise (while he takes credit for being a genius).

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u/20_mile 9h ago

That "one guy" will not have built his billion-dollar company.

Sure, I could have put "one guy can build a billion dollar company by himself" in quotes. I agree with you.

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u/miguelito_loveless 1h ago edited 1h ago

Serves me right for rushing to respond. Upon rereading, your intent is quite clear to me, no additional quotes needed. I don't like their fantasy.

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u/miguk 11h ago

Note that this does not usually apply to free open source software, as they are usually set up by hobbyists and can be forked if the current maintainer decides to enshittify it.

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u/happyflappypancakes 13h ago

Data is the product in the AI age. We are the data. We are fueling AI growth and a small number of people are going to make billions and even trillions off of that. We should all benefit.

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u/ThatUsernameWasTaken 11h ago

We live in a datapunk world. All the dystopia of cyberpunk, none of the cool augments.

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u/happyflappypancakes 10h ago

It really call comes down to wealth distribution. As time goes on it becomes more and more lopsided.

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u/Easy-Complaint-5156 12h ago

Try to be more original. 🙄

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u/Goku420overlord 11h ago

If you are using a paid service on the internet you may still be the product to subsidize costs or increase profits.

This is what they are doing with everything. Own a tv or console, ads on your 1000 dollar machine. Ads everywhere. If it is going to happen we should get a cut or free everything

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 10h ago

mostly like "if there is any possible way to monetize your interactions with our product, regardless of paying for it or not, we will sell it to the furthest extent possible"

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u/MrdnBrd19 12h ago

Technically you do see that money. Providing services and serving data costs money. 

Like let's just take Google Maps for example, analysts predict Google spends about $1.5 billion dollars a year to keep Google Maps updated. Things like buying new satellite and aerial data, maintaining the Street View vehicles and personal(they use everything from cars, to boats, to people, they have even used sheep), processing all the new data they get, verifying and moderating changes that need to be made. They then have to pay to serve that data to their customers(though Google maps uses a ton of cost saving tricks like using Google Distributed Cloud to help serve map data).

IDK how old you are, but before Google came and disrupted the GPS market GPS providers passed those costs back to the customer. GPS hardware was fairly expensive and map data was updated via periodic paid updates(usually annually, somewhere between $50-$120 depending on the service). You couldn't get features like real time traffic data, weather, gas prices, etc unless you paid for a subscription, and even with all that verification was spotty at best. God forbid you have to drive through a rural area(you know, where you might need it most) because data was often just straight wrong or in some cases non existent.

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u/happyflappypancakes 12h ago

Im talking direct sums of money to US citizens to spend how they choose. Every year. My concern is that it will be a disproportionate distribution of wealth from data sales.

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u/Cavewoman22 13h ago

You signed those rights away when you downloaded or started to use the product. Got to read that fine print.

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u/happyflappypancakes 13h ago

And I think that is something people should not accept. Those laws can be changed. People are a product now. People shouldnt accept being sold without compensation. Times need to change with the technology.

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u/Jazzlike_Razzmatazz 12h ago

Have you paid a single dollar for Google Maps yet? That's your compensation.

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u/happyflappypancakes 12h ago

I understand that in our current system that is our compensation. My point is that I dont believe that is enough. I just want you to be paid for your data. Not just in-service but in money.

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u/Jazzlike_Razzmatazz 12h ago

You've signed the TOS; you will be getting paid in service only. If you disagree, don't use the service at all.

Google Maps won't collect data from you if you remove it from your mobile.

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u/happyflappypancakes 12h ago

You are missing a step. Google maps buys our data. Its the selling process that needs to incorporate us. And I understand thisnisnt how our system is set uo. Im proposing radical changes. But Ai think AI will bring radical changes to our economy. Sometimes you need to fight radical with radical.

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u/Jazzlike_Razzmatazz 11h ago

Call me pessimistic or what, the only ones who will get hurt in that fight are US. Things will never get better for common people; they never have. I fear that by fighting the current system, we may even lose whatever service we get as compensation, even now.

Think of a future where you'll have to PAY TO USE the internet and services like Google Maps while corporations freely collect your data.

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u/happyflappypancakes 11h ago

I don't think I have quite as pessimistic view as you in some ways. I think in our current system it will 100% be like that. But I also don't think we are so far gone that we can't changes some of these systems to accommodate these new radical changes.

And I disagree that things never get better for common people. They are categorically improved over the millennia. The middle didn't exist at certain point in history.

However, I agree that that dystopian future you refer to is a possibility. It's exactly the reason why I hold these opinions on how things should be.

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u/roleplayersir 10h ago

We should be seeing some money as compensation for all the stolen writings and other art

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u/happyflappypancakes 9h ago

Im talking specifically about data transfer and sales. We are the product and we arent being compensated for our own sale.