5 ms·

Everyone seems to be unsurprised by this move, but I’m genuinely shocked. What a shoot your own foot business decision. Google, evil though it be, doesn’t post

Everyone seems to be unsurprised by this move, but I’m genuinely shocked. What a shoot your own foot business decision. Google, evil though it be, doesn’t post the text of your gmails in its search results because who would consider using Gmail after that? This is the llm equivalent. Am I missing something?

KoolKat23 1y ago
This data is useful for reinforcement learning. All the others do it. And most importantly, you can just opt-out.
- turnsout 1y ago
  You can't opt out of the data retention policy.
  - smca 1y ago
    The data retention period is 30 days if you don't choose to improve model training. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms#:~:text=If%20you%20do%20not%20choose%20to%20provide%20your%20data%20for%20model%20training%2C%20you%E2%80%99ll%20continue%20with%20our%20existing%2030%2Dday%20data%20retention%20period. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms...
    - turnsout 1y ago
      Oh, I didn't catch this—that's good news
- superposeur 1y ago
  Ok, to be clear, let’s say I’m dumb and accidentally go with the default (I get the color of the opt out button wrong or something). As if there’s a “publish my private emails to the internet” default-on button in email. Then, I use it to edit a rec letter for student X, with my signature Y. (Yes I know this is dumb and I try changing names when editing but am sure some actual names may slip through.) A few months later the next model is released trained on the data. Student X asks Claude what Y would write in a rec letter about X. Such a button is a “wings stay on / wings fall off” button on a plane.
  - franga2000 1y ago
    You're severely overestimating the ability of the model to recall a single mostly uninteresting item from it's billions of input documents.
- behnamoh 1y ago
  Just because all the others do it doesn’t make it right. Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others.
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    > Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others. Oh the naivety. Sooner or later they all become the same, soon after "investors" or "shareholders" arrive.
    - behnamoh 1y ago
      > Sooner or later they all become the same, soon after "investors" or "shareholders" arrive. They already arrived. Google was one of the main investors of Anthro.
  - KoolKat23 1y ago
    There's no reason to be shocked by the practice however.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    > Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others. Companies are less like people and more like bacteria. They are programmatic, like algorithms. What they will do has already been decided for them, programmed into them, by the rules of capitalism. It is inevitable. There are no good guys, and there are no bad guys, there's just... microbes. Those who do not engage in capitalism, perhaps they do not seek money at all, have no such hard limitations. But they are rare, because money is blood.
shadowgovt 1y ago
The LLM equivalent is what Google does do, which is train its spam filters on the contents of your emails coupled to the signal of what human beings flag as spam. (It was one of the first significant value-adds of GMail: at its scale, Google could create a global-concept understanding of the content and pattern of spam across hundreds of millions of users. That was the kind of Big Data that made it possible to build filters where one could confidently say "This is tuned on all spam in the wild, because we've seen all spam in the wild").
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> Am I missing something? I think you do: According to the article https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anthropic-reverses-privacy-sta-xH4KWU9nS3KH4Aj9F12dvQ https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anthropic-reverses-privacy-st... "Enterprise and educational customers will continue operating under their existing privacy protections, as the policy changes specifically exclude Claude for Work and Claude for Education services. These commercial accounts remain governed by separate contractual agreements that maintain stricter data handling standards. Organizations using Claude through business partnerships or educational licenses can continue their operations without concern for the new training policies affecting their sensitive communications or proprietary information." Thus, I think your claim > What a shoot your own foot business decision. likely does not hold: the non-commercial accounts likely led to Anthropic loosing money, so they are not liked by Anthropic anyway (but are a an "inconvenient necessity" to get people to notice and try out your product offering). With this new decision, Anthropic makes this "free-riding" less attractive. I bet that Anthropic will soon release a press statement (that exists in the drawers for quite a long time) "We are listening to your concerns, and will thus extend our 'privacy-conscious offering' to new groups of customers. Only 30 $ per month."
- layer8 1y ago
  Well, it means that LLMs used for business use cases will be trained on input from non-business use cases of non-privacy-conscious users.
- ceroxylon 1y ago
  > With this new decision, Anthropic makes this "free-riding" less attractive Certainly not for any users like you and me, it takes two seconds and three clicks to review the new terms and decline chat training. This is more like Anthropic getting easy training from people who are unaware or don't care.
  - soiltype 1y ago
    Seems the same thing. They're giving plausible deniability, but knowing they'll still scoop up a worthwhile amount of data/profit from some % of users.
rs186 1y ago
Gmail used to serve ads based on your emails for many years until 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513/google-says-it-will-no-longer-read-users-emails-to-sell-targeted-ads https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513...
- skylurk 1y ago
  And in 2010 they made https the default. Different times :)
  - j4hdufd8 1y ago
    I don't think https is responsible for that. Google owns the data, it doesn't matter how it is transported. It does, however, matter how it is stored (which I hope is encrypted in a way only you can retrieve it)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
einpoklum 1y ago
Google mines the bejeezus out of your email, and uses it to any number of ends, including manipulating you into buying things, and also passing your correspondence on to the US government. While this is not the same as outright making your emails universally searchable - training Claude on your emails is also not the same as posting their contents. And - this behavior of Google's has not been penalized, I'm afraid.
podgorniy 1y ago
What a framing. Like there is exactly a surprise behing all these reactions.

KoolKat23 1y ago

This data is useful for reinforcement learning. All the others do it. And most importantly, you can just opt-out.

turnsout 1y ago
You can't opt out of the data retention policy.
- smca 1y ago
  The data retention period is 30 days if you don't choose to improve model training. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms#:~:text=If%20you%20do%20not%20choose%20to%20provide%20your%20data%20for%20model%20training%2C%20you%E2%80%99ll%20continue%20with%20our%20existing%2030%2Dday%20data%20retention%20period. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms...
  - turnsout 1y ago
    Oh, I didn't catch this—that's good news
superposeur 1y ago
Ok, to be clear, let’s say I’m dumb and accidentally go with the default (I get the color of the opt out button wrong or something). As if there’s a “publish my private emails to the internet” default-on button in email. Then, I use it to edit a rec letter for student X, with my signature Y. (Yes I know this is dumb and I try changing names when editing but am sure some actual names may slip through.) A few months later the next model is released trained on the data. Student X asks Claude what Y would write in a rec letter about X. Such a button is a “wings stay on / wings fall off” button on a plane.
- franga2000 1y ago
  You're severely overestimating the ability of the model to recall a single mostly uninteresting item from it's billions of input documents.
behnamoh 1y ago
Just because all the others do it doesn’t make it right. Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  > Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others. Oh the naivety. Sooner or later they all become the same, soon after "investors" or "shareholders" arrive.
  - behnamoh 1y ago
    > Sooner or later they all become the same, soon after "investors" or "shareholders" arrive. They already arrived. Google was one of the main investors of Anthro.
- KoolKat23 1y ago
  There's no reason to be shocked by the practice however.
- const_cast 1y ago
  > Many users chose Anthropic exactly because they were not like the others. Companies are less like people and more like bacteria. They are programmatic, like algorithms. What they will do has already been decided for them, programmed into them, by the rules of capitalism. It is inevitable. There are no good guys, and there are no bad guys, there's just... microbes. Those who do not engage in capitalism, perhaps they do not seek money at all, have no such hard limitations. But they are rare, because money is blood.

shadowgovt 1y ago

The LLM equivalent is what Google does do, which is train its spam filters on the contents of your emails coupled to the signal of what human beings flag as spam. (It was one of the first significant value-adds of GMail: at its scale, Google could create a global-concept understanding of the content and pattern of spam across hundreds of millions of users. That was the kind of Big Data that made it possible to build filters where one could confidently say "This is tuned on all spam in the wild, because we've seen all spam in the wild").

aleph_minus_one 1y ago

> Am I missing something? I think you do: According to the article https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anthropic-reverses-privacy-sta-xH4KWU9nS3KH4Aj9F12dvQ https://www.perplexity.ai/page/anthropic-reverses-privacy-st... "Enterprise and educational customers will continue operating under their existing privacy protections, as the policy changes specifically exclude Claude for Work and Claude for Education services. These commercial accounts remain governed by separate contractual agreements that maintain stricter data handling standards. Organizations using Claude through business partnerships or educational licenses can continue their operations without concern for the new training policies affecting their sensitive communications or proprietary information." Thus, I think your claim > What a shoot your own foot business decision. likely does not hold: the non-commercial accounts likely led to Anthropic loosing money, so they are not liked by Anthropic anyway (but are a an "inconvenient necessity" to get people to notice and try out your product offering). With this new decision, Anthropic makes this "free-riding" less attractive. I bet that Anthropic will soon release a press statement (that exists in the drawers for quite a long time) "We are listening to your concerns, and will thus extend our 'privacy-conscious offering' to new groups of customers. Only 30 $ per month."

layer8 1y ago
Well, it means that LLMs used for business use cases will be trained on input from non-business use cases of non-privacy-conscious users.
ceroxylon 1y ago
> With this new decision, Anthropic makes this "free-riding" less attractive Certainly not for any users like you and me, it takes two seconds and three clicks to review the new terms and decline chat training. This is more like Anthropic getting easy training from people who are unaware or don't care.
- soiltype 1y ago
  Seems the same thing. They're giving plausible deniability, but knowing they'll still scoop up a worthwhile amount of data/profit from some % of users.

rs186 1y ago

Gmail used to serve ads based on your emails for many years until 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513/google-says-it-will-no-longer-read-users-emails-to-sell-targeted-ads https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513...

skylurk 1y ago
And in 2010 they made https the default. Different times :)
- j4hdufd8 1y ago
  I don't think https is responsible for that. Google owns the data, it doesn't matter how it is transported. It does, however, matter how it is stored (which I hope is encrypted in a way only you can retrieve it)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

einpoklum 1y ago

Google mines the bejeezus out of your email, and uses it to any number of ends, including manipulating you into buying things, and also passing your correspondence on to the US government. While this is not the same as outright making your emails universally searchable - training Claude on your emails is also not the same as posting their contents. And - this behavior of Google's has not been penalized, I'm afraid.

podgorniy 1y ago

What a framing. Like there is exactly a surprise behing all these reactions.