From Prospect.org:
Job postings and interviews with senior security officials at Anthropic show that the frontier AI lab is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen. In some cases, that also means reporting suspects to police before a crime occurs. Anthropic did not respond to the Prospect’s request for comment.
. . .
Last month, The San Francisco Standard reported that Anthropic had reported a man to San Francisco police for telling Claude that he had bought an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had CEO Dario Amodei “in his sights.” When the Standard contacted the man in question, he told the newspaper he was “just fucking around.”
But while Anthropic was fast to call the cops on a frustrated Claude user, the Standard also reported a key detail: Anthropic refused to show police the actual messages, citing Anthropic’s internal policy. In short, Anthropic reported a user for in-platform speech, and then refused to provide police with evidence of actual wrongdoing.
This kind of pre-crime policing, encouraged without due process, is referenced as an explicit goal by Anthropic’s security program manager in the podcast reviewed by the Prospect. “The goal would be transforming operations from reactive information to gathering proactive and predictive and preventative threat engagement and management,” he said, adding, “That’s the kind of operational maturity that makes sense for protecting high-value targets in any industry.”
The question is, then, which side of the fence are you on? Are the one doing the surveillance, or are you the one being surveilled? Because you are either one or the other.
And how hard would it be for some bureaucrat, or high-value target, to dictate the results? You know that somewhere in the chain of command there will humans with human faults and human desires who can put their thumb on the scale and queer the deal, turning legitimate actions into crimes, or pre-crimes.
Lord have mercy on us all.
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