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Shrug. Hard to feel sorry for companies that created their empires by ignoring copyright themselves. Also, 'most extensive industrial espionage campaign, prob

Shrug. Hard to feel sorry for companies that created their empires by ignoring copyright themselves. Also, 'most extensive industrial espionage campaign, probably ever' is absolute nonsense. They did not need to infiltrate the companies for this nor are you accusing them of stealing any trade secrets. This is only about whether they looked at their competitors' products from the outside (in the form of conversation tokens) and used it to improve their own product (by training). Hardly the crime of the century.

tristanj 3mo ago
> 'most extensive industrial espionage campaign, probably ever' is absolute nonsense You are completely underestimating the scale of what is happening here. Chinese AI labs are actively facilitating an industrial-scale network of tens of thousands of bot accounts, that resell Claude tokens at 97% below official API prices. They buy subsidized Max 5x plans (sometimes with stolen credit cards), then split the subscription across dozens of clients and reselling the output. They are running a massive data-harvesting operation. Chinese labs and token resellers subsidize the cost of the tokens in exchange for the API metadata (detailed reasoning traces, model outputs, and tool calls) to use as high-quality training data for their own models. They are buying Anthropic's own product, just to resell it below cost, just so they can capture the training data. Reportedly, they are paying as much as ~$0.01 per tool call. https://x.com/yan5xu/status/2029743983522631698 https://x.com/yan5xu/status/2029743983522631698 I explained what is happening in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664814
- Certhas 3mo ago
  You haven't explained how this is illegal or any more immoral than scraping the web for training data. As you said yourself: They are buying the product. Then they are using it for their own purposes. That's more than Anthropic/OpenAI did for the open internet. That's more than Meta did when they obtained torrents of books in the early days, and then claimed that even though the data was obtained illegally they can still train on it just fine. They paid for it! It's absurd to call this espionage!
  - tristanj 3mo ago
    > They paid for it! They didn't though. The resellers are not buying via the official API, they're buying Max subscriptions (where tokens are priced ~10x below API cost), then splitting the subscription across dozens of clients and reselling the output as the regular API. Anthropic prices its subscription plans barely at cost, to bring in customers onto their enterprise plans where they can charge expensive API rates. Reselling these subsidized plans for price arbitrage is a TOS violation. It's not a legitimate purchase. Plus, a non-trivial amount of this volume is funded by stolen credit cards, so this "revenue" gets chargeback anyway. The resellers then log all the the model output, then sell it to Chinese labs as training data. > is it any more immoral than scraping the web for training data. I think you'd acknowledge there's a difference between "We indexed public web pages" and "We deployed tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts to resell your subsidized plan for cheap, stealing your own customers, while collecting the data to build our own competing product" are very different actions. One can believe the first was wrong while acknowledging the second is far worse.
    - Certhas 3mo ago
      TOS violations are not espionage. Everybody who links up Claude to OpenCode is violating the TOS. So from the largest industrial espionage in history we have left "They paid for the accounts but violated the TOS". And then you randomly add the claim they stole the money to pay for the accounts. You have provided no evidence other than "Claude tokens are sold for cheap in China". As others have pointed out, that might also simply be counterfeit tokens generated by open weight models. The western labs have established the precedent that all data they can buy beg borrow or steal is fair game. Turning around and crying foul when the Chinese labs follow their lead is hypocrisy.
      - tristanj 3mo ago
        Have a read of this detailed article, it's well sourced and documented that token resellers are logging the Claude outputs and selling them to Chinese labs. All your points are addressed in there https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens... I linked it earlier, but it seems you didn't see it. re: labs purchasing model/tool output, see https://x.com/xkajon/status/2050445443889525235 https://x.com/xkajon/status/2050445443889525235 re: model swapping, sure some providers may swap models, but there are many that don't, see https://www.hvoy.ai/en https://www.hvoy.ai/en for a list.
- vanviegen 3mo ago
  Does anything about that strike you as particularly unfair, given the moral compass defined by Big AI?
  - tristanj 3mo ago
    The situation strikes me as morally ambiguous. The resellers are: 1) selling Anthropic's products at a 95% discount and redirecting Anthropic's own customers to themselves. A customer is far less inclined to buy directly from Anthropic when a reseller is offering an identical product for 10x less. This situation is highly similar to internet piracy. 2) keeping the token logs from Anthropic's products and selling them to competitors, so those competitors can build their own equivalent models. The resellers get paid per token log they deliver. This situation is highly similar to espionage.
    - anon373839 3mo ago
      May I ask you a personal question? What is motivating you to take up the frontier labs' cause in this way? Not a rhetorical question. For my part, I'll happily disclose that I have an axe to grind. I think the major AI labs are an aggressive form of a cancer that's been ravaging our society. I want to see them fail, of course -- but more than that, I want to see the public develop an immune response to this. I just can't wrap my head around why someone would expend so much effort speaking up on their behalf. They have, after all, highly compensated PR people doing that for them!
      - copperx 3mo ago
        I suspect OP is the infamous Dario. We found his HN "anon" username. That's the only explanation.
      - tristanj 3mo ago
        bc more people need to be aware of the proxy station and industrial token distillation complex. many people i've replied to refuse to believe this is going on. once you realize what's actually happening, and that you can get Chinese-lab-subsidized tokens at a >95% discount, why would you ever pay full price for overpriced APIs?
- remexre 3mo ago
  if Ford bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Hyundais, put extra instrumentation in them, and resold them at a discount to customers who agreed to the instrumentation in exchange for the discount, is Ford doing industrial espionage?
  - tristanj 3mo ago
    You skipped the part where Ford buys the cars at 90% off and sells them at 80% off, at a profit. Then gets paid by competitors for the driving data. At the same time, Volvo is running the exact same hustle, except they buy the cars with stolen credit cards, so they get the cars for free.
    - anon373839 3mo ago
      You skipped the part where Hyundai chose to sell the cars at loss in the hopes of eventually gaining a monopoly position.
      - tristanj 3mo ago
        Misleading on both counts: 1) Anthropic tokens via subscription aren't sold at a loss, they're sold at cost. 2) Subscription plans are not sold in hopes of eventually gaining a monopoly position. They act as a loss leader designed to get a foot-in-the-door and funnel companies into costly enterprise plans, where Anthropic can charge full API rates.
        newswasboring 3mo ago
        Why should other people be responsible to make their business model work? They hold like all the money, if they can't make it work please shut down. Companies like OpenAI have already broken the public trust by breaking their non profit promises. They don't deserve any politeness at this point.
        hdjdjdjdjdjdjd 3mo ago
        [dead]

tristanj 3mo ago

> 'most extensive industrial espionage campaign, probably ever' is absolute nonsense You are completely underestimating the scale of what is happening here. Chinese AI labs are actively facilitating an industrial-scale network of tens of thousands of bot accounts, that resell Claude tokens at 97% below official API prices. They buy subsidized Max 5x plans (sometimes with stolen credit cards), then split the subscription across dozens of clients and reselling the output. They are running a massive data-harvesting operation. Chinese labs and token resellers subsidize the cost of the tokens in exchange for the API metadata (detailed reasoning traces, model outputs, and tool calls) to use as high-quality training data for their own models. They are buying Anthropic's own product, just to resell it below cost, just so they can capture the training data. Reportedly, they are paying as much as ~$0.01 per tool call. https://x.com/yan5xu/status/2029743983522631698 https://x.com/yan5xu/status/2029743983522631698 I explained what is happening in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664814

Certhas 3mo ago
You haven't explained how this is illegal or any more immoral than scraping the web for training data. As you said yourself: They are buying the product. Then they are using it for their own purposes. That's more than Anthropic/OpenAI did for the open internet. That's more than Meta did when they obtained torrents of books in the early days, and then claimed that even though the data was obtained illegally they can still train on it just fine. They paid for it! It's absurd to call this espionage!
- tristanj 3mo ago
  > They paid for it! They didn't though. The resellers are not buying via the official API, they're buying Max subscriptions (where tokens are priced ~10x below API cost), then splitting the subscription across dozens of clients and reselling the output as the regular API. Anthropic prices its subscription plans barely at cost, to bring in customers onto their enterprise plans where they can charge expensive API rates. Reselling these subsidized plans for price arbitrage is a TOS violation. It's not a legitimate purchase. Plus, a non-trivial amount of this volume is funded by stolen credit cards, so this "revenue" gets chargeback anyway. The resellers then log all the the model output, then sell it to Chinese labs as training data. > is it any more immoral than scraping the web for training data. I think you'd acknowledge there's a difference between "We indexed public web pages" and "We deployed tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts to resell your subsidized plan for cheap, stealing your own customers, while collecting the data to build our own competing product" are very different actions. One can believe the first was wrong while acknowledging the second is far worse.
  - Certhas 3mo ago
    TOS violations are not espionage. Everybody who links up Claude to OpenCode is violating the TOS. So from the largest industrial espionage in history we have left "They paid for the accounts but violated the TOS". And then you randomly add the claim they stole the money to pay for the accounts. You have provided no evidence other than "Claude tokens are sold for cheap in China". As others have pointed out, that might also simply be counterfeit tokens generated by open weight models. The western labs have established the precedent that all data they can buy beg borrow or steal is fair game. Turning around and crying foul when the Chinese labs follow their lead is hypocrisy.
    - tristanj 3mo ago
      Have a read of this detailed article, it's well sourced and documented that token resellers are logging the Claude outputs and selling them to Chinese labs. All your points are addressed in there https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens... I linked it earlier, but it seems you didn't see it. re: labs purchasing model/tool output, see https://x.com/xkajon/status/2050445443889525235 https://x.com/xkajon/status/2050445443889525235 re: model swapping, sure some providers may swap models, but there are many that don't, see https://www.hvoy.ai/en https://www.hvoy.ai/en for a list.
vanviegen 3mo ago
Does anything about that strike you as particularly unfair, given the moral compass defined by Big AI?
- tristanj 3mo ago
  The situation strikes me as morally ambiguous. The resellers are: 1) selling Anthropic's products at a 95% discount and redirecting Anthropic's own customers to themselves. A customer is far less inclined to buy directly from Anthropic when a reseller is offering an identical product for 10x less. This situation is highly similar to internet piracy. 2) keeping the token logs from Anthropic's products and selling them to competitors, so those competitors can build their own equivalent models. The resellers get paid per token log they deliver. This situation is highly similar to espionage.
  - anon373839 3mo ago
    May I ask you a personal question? What is motivating you to take up the frontier labs' cause in this way? Not a rhetorical question. For my part, I'll happily disclose that I have an axe to grind. I think the major AI labs are an aggressive form of a cancer that's been ravaging our society. I want to see them fail, of course -- but more than that, I want to see the public develop an immune response to this. I just can't wrap my head around why someone would expend so much effort speaking up on their behalf. They have, after all, highly compensated PR people doing that for them!
    - copperx 3mo ago
      I suspect OP is the infamous Dario. We found his HN "anon" username. That's the only explanation.
    - tristanj 3mo ago
      bc more people need to be aware of the proxy station and industrial token distillation complex. many people i've replied to refuse to believe this is going on. once you realize what's actually happening, and that you can get Chinese-lab-subsidized tokens at a >95% discount, why would you ever pay full price for overpriced APIs?
remexre 3mo ago
if Ford bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Hyundais, put extra instrumentation in them, and resold them at a discount to customers who agreed to the instrumentation in exchange for the discount, is Ford doing industrial espionage?
- tristanj 3mo ago
  You skipped the part where Ford buys the cars at 90% off and sells them at 80% off, at a profit. Then gets paid by competitors for the driving data. At the same time, Volvo is running the exact same hustle, except they buy the cars with stolen credit cards, so they get the cars for free.
  - anon373839 3mo ago
    You skipped the part where Hyundai chose to sell the cars at loss in the hopes of eventually gaining a monopoly position.
    - tristanj 3mo ago
      Misleading on both counts: 1) Anthropic tokens via subscription aren't sold at a loss, they're sold at cost. 2) Subscription plans are not sold in hopes of eventually gaining a monopoly position. They act as a loss leader designed to get a foot-in-the-door and funnel companies into costly enterprise plans, where Anthropic can charge full API rates.
      - newswasboring 3mo ago
        Why should other people be responsible to make their business model work? They hold like all the money, if they can't make it work please shut down. Companies like OpenAI have already broken the public trust by breaking their non profit promises. They don't deserve any politeness at this point.
      - hdjdjdjdjdjdjd 3mo ago
        [dead]