Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge

altmanaltman

> Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it. Thought crimes are real when you're sharing your thoughts with Claude

quadhome

It is unlawful for any person to send, post, or transmit, or procure the sending, posting, or transmission of, a writing or other record, including an electronic record, in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person, when in such writing or record the person makes a threat to: (a) Kill or to do bodily harm to another person; or (b) Conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism. — via https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Disp... The DA is serious about "in any matter."

socializer

I have some sympathy for Anthropic here because I've seen the headlines after OpenAI failed to report a shooter in a similar situation. So from their perspective, it's damned-if-you-don't, damned-if-you-do. However, people need to get it in their heads that they're not chatting with their secret BFF, they're chatting with Big Tech. Before LLMs, Big Tech had no way to scrutinize the bulk of what was going on within their services, so you could have a secret hate diary in Google Docs. Now, everything you say or write can be automatically screened for red flags on a planetary scale, and probably will be because that's what the regulators and "concerned citizens" will demand. In a couple of years, you'll be biting your tongue a lot more often in private chats.

thih9

In any case this is proof that law and negative PR can influence tech companies, including frontier AI providers. Then again, I wish this worked in a way that would give users more privacy and agency, instead of less.

Muromec

They are good at keeping notes on your criminal conspiracy

Anoian

I have told llms all kinds of stories to find out what its answers would be. I always make it sound like it is the truth to make sure the AI answers in a way that it would if somebody actually said this. I also tested internal flagging systems of the ai company I work at with the most evil things a person can ever say to find out if it would flag them. Of course I did not mean any of that stuff, but how can you make sure a human reviewer knows you did not mean it while the llm does not know that you did not mean it. I guess its a miracle I am not in jail yet. Flagging people for anything said to an llm sounds wrong to me because an LLM is not a real person and while some people put in their internal thoughts, others just roleplay and the two are inseparable just from reading it.

CrzyLngPwd

Oh man, what a crazy time to be alive. Over in Europe they want to read all ofd our private messages, yet these chatbots, pretending to be our friends, will snitch on us just for our thoughts. It's getting pretty orwellian out there.

Dig1t

The future is incredibly dark if they manage to ban open source models.

dabinat

This kind of thing will get worse with humanoid robots because they have cameras and microphones. Will they be programmed to tell on you if you break any kind of rule in front of them because their owners are terrified of being sued?

feverzsj

If only the woman hosted open-weight model in her house.

shlant

this feels very thought-crimey to me, but I think I'd have to actually see that chats to really decide. Like is she making plans/asking for advice? is she just talking about her feelings exactly as if it's a diary?

olalonde

> The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it. How does a LLM prompt satisfy this? I guess it'll be an easy win for her.

hackernud3s

AI snitches don't get stitches.

vasco

I guess it's time to come up with a more plausible explanation about why I asked how to make nuclear weapons almost every month to test LLM refusals.

apparent

I don't understand how she violated this law: > Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. She didn't threaten anything, she wrote down that she was going to do it. A "threat" is more than a mere statement, especially when written in what is described as a "diary". > A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office. Obviously I don't want anyone to shoot up anything, but this seems like a weak case legally speaking.

Havoc

> making a written threat of violence under Florida law. A diary constitutes making a threat? Oh boy the roleplaying part of LLM world is in for a bad time

Lio

For the sake of argument what would happen if she had kept the diary locally and claude code scanned the file? What would happen if it had scanned a file it didn’t have permission to look at and found this threat? I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. On the one hand if you’re using claude as a diary you have no expectation of privacy and she was talking about committing a very serious crime. This still makes me feel queasy though.

jameskilton

Anthropic commits literal felonies by stealing millions of books and violating Copyright like it doesn't exist: no charge. One unfortunate woman who happened to write the wrong thing in the wrong place is now having her life turned upside-down for perceived thought-crime. To Anthropic, and all employees working there, your company's product and the result of your work is cruelty . You are enabling it and pushing it down everyone's throat. You can never again claim that you are the "ethical" AI company, for no such thing exists.

kmfrk

After people getting pilloried for social media posts from twenty years ago, I really hope (sensible) people will have the wherewithal to think twice about what they hand over to their chatbots.

AIorNot

isnt this the plot of the Movie Kimi? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gr2zXuEBL0