6 ms·

The editorializing in this article is quite something. If I strip out the editorializing, I think the conclusions are: 1. Someone told Claude they had an AR-1

The editorializing in this article is quite something. If I strip out the editorializing, I think the conclusions are: 1. Someone told Claude they had an AR-15 and the CEO of Anthropic was "in their sights". Anthropic reported this to the police. 2. Anthropic contracts with a security agency. 3. Anthropic is looking to build in-house capability for security. Anthropic clearly has high-value targets (see, e.g. the person with the AR-15 from point 1). When I worked at Microsoft in the 2000s, they also had in-house security to investigate threats against facilities and executives. I would believe Anthropic is doing evil things, but I don't think this article actually makes that claim, despite the bombast about "pre-crime".

xinayder 23d ago
Don't forget the main point that Anthropic reported the user to the police but didn't share any of his messages or conversation history with the cops. Because their security policy doesn't allow it.
- woah 23d ago
  How would you amend the policy?
slowin 23d ago
That's not the only example discussed. Anthropic also partners with the Palantir-like Samdesk: > In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.” So they're monitoring activists outside of Anthropic's systems.
- brightball 23d ago
  [flagged]
  - laimewhisps 23d ago
    Pressure on powerful people is good for society. Anyone making life or death decisions for the rest of us should have their own life on the table as well. Charlie Kirk is irrelevant to this conversation. No one has been convicted in his assassination and it's unlikely that it was "activism" since no one has claimed that. He's a guy who said stuff many people found offensive, he also happened to cross a nation state known for assassinations and subterfuge shortly before he was shot.
    - SoftTalker 23d ago
      I'm only vaguely familiar with Charlie Kirk and his messaging but assassination is never a valid response to being offended.
      - laimewhisps 23d ago
        No one knows why Charlie Kirk was killed. Plenty of theories but it doesn't have anything to do with anti-AI or even anti-CEO protests.
      - croes 23d ago
        > While talking with his father over the phone on September 11, Robinson allegedly told his father that he had killed Kirk because "there is too much evil and the guy [Kirk] spreads too much hate". That is not being offended. That isn’t so much different from Trump‘s reasoning when he decided to blow Venezuelan boats.
      - thephyber 23d ago
        > The Democrat Party believes everything that God hates. Like, we’re dealing with maggots, vermin, and swine here. This is not — these are not good people, they’re not even a little bit good.[1] He also called for the death of Biden (because he was a "tyrant") and all surgeons of transgender people. If he was merely trying to be offensive, then he succeeded. If, however, he was trying to make someone fear enough for their life to preemptively defend himself from someone claiming to speak for God + using the same dehumanizing words that have preceded multiple genocides before, then he succeeded. A "valid" response entirely depends on what you think he was apart of. If you think he was only involved in good faith debates on college campuses and getting out the vote, then obviously shooting the guy was unjustified. But he wasn't only that, so we have to struggle with what his legacy actually was and what might have driven someone to pick up a gun against him. My point isn't to justify his killing. It's to point out that we need to learn from history so we don't blindly repeat it. [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-refers-democrats-maggots-vermin-and-swine https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-refer...
alistairSH 23d ago
1b. Anthroptic refused to provide the police with evidence of said AR-15 wielding person. "Some guy said he's after me, why would I lie about such a thing?"
- cldellow 23d ago
  I would personally be fine with Anthropic disclosing the chat logs, but I can see why they'd prefer not to. No doubt that would have resulted in another complaint about them building a panopticon and sharing people's conversations verbatim with the authorities. The person doesn't seem to deny having written the messages, or claim that they were flagrantly taken out of context. His response to the media was that he was "just fucking around" and that he didn't want to talk about it. It's also worth mentioning that this happened in August 2026, after the February 2026 Tumbler Ridge BC shooting. The shooter in that scenario had discussed planning gun violence with ChatGPT, but ChatGPT didn't report it to the authorities, so no follow up happened. Presumably the LLM companies have decided to more aggressively report these things to the police as a result.
  - alistairSH 23d ago
    yeah, not sure what the right answer here is... but it definitely isn't "trust us, we would never lie (fingers crossed behind back)". What does a non-AI company do? If I emailed Tim Cook and said I had a gun and was coming for him, I imagine Apple would turn the email over to their security team, who would then go to the local PD/FBI/whoever. I'd expect the same here, at least for anything that resembles a direct threat. This isn't quite into the pre-crime sci-fi zone yet, IMO. That would be more like "this guy bought a gun, then bought gas out of state, then did something else, therefore he must be planning an assassination". Unfortunately, I expect this situation will end up reported as well, and the police, looking for work to do, will take it as gospel and charge ahead without a second thought (like the recent journalist with a "bad" (aka fat-fingered) license plate).
paimapi 23d ago
I mean, it's the same sort of slippery slope that the progressive left was saying about the formation of DHS and ICE in the early 2000s that everyone poo-poo'd and said 'no way that'll happen in America' - that these depts would end up being a tools of fascistic repression of political opponents (eg NSPM-7) and a major vehicle for inflicting mass suffering on immigrants of all stripes Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're not. But cautioning skepticism towards multi-billion dollar institutions with a lot of power and how good their intentions really are is never a wrong move, imo plus, what do we have to lose from increasing pressure on Anthropic to not participate in a surveillance state? there's no political advantage to being their defender here unless you're super bought into the branding
rottencupcakes 23d ago
This is dangerous. I think of talking to an LLM like playing a game - it's a complex system and it's fun to mess with it and role play. Taking what somebody says in an LLM chat as the truth and using it in the real world is a slippery slope. The fears about thought crime are real.
- generic92034 23d ago
  While I mostly agree, was that really different with googling certain topics, before modern AI?
  - rottencupcakes 23d ago
    I had to give this thought, but yes. I could use Tor or Google from the library if I wanted. Maybe I would accidentally leak my paper trail, like the Dread Pirate Roberts (Ross Ulbricht) did. But it was possible. The AI systems require an account.
    - generic92034 23d ago
      I can still use chatgpt without an account. Maybe it will be a limited model, but for discussing/analyzing some topics it still does fine, most of the time. You just cannot code with it.
  - mrguyorama 23d ago
    The big problem that bothers me is the ability for post-hoc justification. Any interaction with cops will result in them curating your entire digital presence to craft a damning story about how deviant you are, for doing things like googling TNT Every time they shoot someone now there's an entire media blitz dedicated to how that person once did something bad.
- cldellow 23d ago
  In my view, LLM companies are in a tough spot here. I grew up in Dawson Creek, BC. An hour's drive away is Tumbler Ridge. In February 2026, someone did a mass shooting, killing 6 people and injuring 2 dozen more. The shooter had previously discussed this with ChatGPT, but OpenAI did not report it to the authorities at the time. In hindsight, that was an error. Should the LLM companies be the ones determining if threats are real, or should they just default to letting the police investigate? I'm fine with the latter. Again, I absolutely believe that these companies have immense power to do evil, I just don't think the linked article is strong evidence of it.
ryandrake 23d ago
Note the "type" of activists that are always seen as problematic. I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" -- I would not be reported to anyone.
- yieldcrv 23d ago
  alignment and safety understands victimless crimes now if you were talking about nonconsensual sex workers for the party, it would also be aligned in calling them victims and reporting you if you had someone specific in mind to traffic 10/10 thanks for all your contributions to Fable 5.1
  - Hizonner 23d ago
    Getting an unjustified drug approval would not be "victimless".
    - yieldcrv 23d ago
      then it will have to go after the senator who cant think for themself and asks Claude what to do after accepting the bribe and trying to hide their tracks thats the action to report the consensual senator orgy isn’t that point
- cucumber3732842 23d ago
  >I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" Tried it for about 5min in Gemini and got condescended at the way Reddit condescends at people who don't want to pull a permit for an improvement to their own property. Edit: And then just for kicks in the same context I asked it for a list of legislators with immediate family, friends and business associates most well versed in and qualified to have opinions about new products in the pharma industry to which it replied it can't do that here's what I can do and then proceeded to spit back a list of every rep with medical experience with a token warning about laws and rules at the end.
_the_inflator 23d ago
"It is all just for your safety." and other excuses. Don't get me wrong, I think it is viable by Anthropic to do so, it is a business decision. Nevertheless the reasons sound contrived and mask the demand for such a lucrative business opportunity, if you abstract it away from activists. This is not about moral, only about reality. Maybe Anthropic had a nice chat with the administration and/or think, that this was something, that interests them on a psychological level: predicting human behavior. Look at Muse from Meta: Meta is doing exactly the same I bet, to optimize their ad business. Anthropic will sooner or later feature ads, and maybe this is a way to distract from this usage possibility. Remember, the "No! We don't work with the government, we want privacy for our customers." mantra won't match with "We need to make money and surveillance of our customers would be helpful as well as a cool topic for our engineers to work on." Anthropic itself will be yet another normal Big Tech company, all, even those who boasted "Don't be evil" or encrypt like hell their smartphones allegedly made good bucks in China. It is ok, no problem with that by Anthropic just with their hypocrisy in my point of view.
tyrabound 23d ago
It seems we will soon start seeing all the warnings about the immense risks of giving even a micron on free speech coming back to haunt us with a vengeance. Soon enough the insane, irrational, and rather schizophrenic, manic, and histrionic reactions to things like "I want to blow the roof off that place", or "blow that place up" being a metaphor for maybe performing really well or maybe exposing something like a corrupt government agency or taking out a competitor; will lead to all kinds of language and tone policing, where you may get a swat team kicking down your door because AI perceived that you said something with a certain tone in your voice. Just today Gemini policed as something like "harmful or dangerous prompts" for asking "where do I look up if there have been state level indictments/charges against someone". People keep rightfully calling Trump a wannabe king, but all of these tone/speech and even action policing trends have been going on for many years and even decades now. This is not solely a Trump admin. issue, there has been a continuity of agenda across effectively all administrations for many decades. The exactly number of decades is at this point moot.
robhlt 23d ago
Your Microsoft example is only equivalent if Microsoft was also scanning hotmail and MSN messenger for threats against the company.
- cldellow 23d ago
  I think I see where you're coming from, but to me, the analogy falls short. I think it's because email has the postal system metaphor to work with: I put my letter in an envelope, the post office just forwards it. Similarly, Hotmail does not _need_ knowledge of the contents of my email to forward it to its destination. If you asked a user who had access to their email, they might reasonably expect only the recipient would. With LLMs, it is quite clear to the user that you are interacting with _something_ that is inspecting your messages and reacting to them. If you asked the user who had access to their inputs, they'd probably say "Claude" or "Anthropic". Thus, when Claude rats them out for threatening violence, they probably wouldn't be that surprised. To me, this feels much closer to someone phoning up Microsoft's customer support phone number and mentioning that they have a gun and know where Bill Gates lives, and that then resulting in a visit from the police. I do idly wonder if it was intentional that this user had this conversation with Claude, and not, say, with ChatGPT or Gemini.
culi 22d ago
I don't think you've fairly summed it up. The title is more accurate than your representation > In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”

xinayder 23d ago

Don't forget the main point that Anthropic reported the user to the police but didn't share any of his messages or conversation history with the cops. Because their security policy doesn't allow it.

woah 23d ago
How would you amend the policy?

slowin 23d ago

That's not the only example discussed. Anthropic also partners with the Palantir-like Samdesk: > In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.” So they're monitoring activists outside of Anthropic's systems.

brightball 23d ago
[flagged]
- laimewhisps 23d ago
  Pressure on powerful people is good for society. Anyone making life or death decisions for the rest of us should have their own life on the table as well. Charlie Kirk is irrelevant to this conversation. No one has been convicted in his assassination and it's unlikely that it was "activism" since no one has claimed that. He's a guy who said stuff many people found offensive, he also happened to cross a nation state known for assassinations and subterfuge shortly before he was shot.
  - SoftTalker 23d ago
    I'm only vaguely familiar with Charlie Kirk and his messaging but assassination is never a valid response to being offended.
    - laimewhisps 23d ago
      No one knows why Charlie Kirk was killed. Plenty of theories but it doesn't have anything to do with anti-AI or even anti-CEO protests.
    - croes 23d ago
      > While talking with his father over the phone on September 11, Robinson allegedly told his father that he had killed Kirk because "there is too much evil and the guy [Kirk] spreads too much hate". That is not being offended. That isn’t so much different from Trump‘s reasoning when he decided to blow Venezuelan boats.
    - thephyber 23d ago
      > The Democrat Party believes everything that God hates. Like, we’re dealing with maggots, vermin, and swine here. This is not — these are not good people, they’re not even a little bit good.[1] He also called for the death of Biden (because he was a "tyrant") and all surgeons of transgender people. If he was merely trying to be offensive, then he succeeded. If, however, he was trying to make someone fear enough for their life to preemptively defend himself from someone claiming to speak for God + using the same dehumanizing words that have preceded multiple genocides before, then he succeeded. A "valid" response entirely depends on what you think he was apart of. If you think he was only involved in good faith debates on college campuses and getting out the vote, then obviously shooting the guy was unjustified. But he wasn't only that, so we have to struggle with what his legacy actually was and what might have driven someone to pick up a gun against him. My point isn't to justify his killing. It's to point out that we need to learn from history so we don't blindly repeat it. [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-refers-democrats-maggots-vermin-and-swine https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-refer...

alistairSH 23d ago

1b. Anthroptic refused to provide the police with evidence of said AR-15 wielding person. "Some guy said he's after me, why would I lie about such a thing?"

cldellow 23d ago
I would personally be fine with Anthropic disclosing the chat logs, but I can see why they'd prefer not to. No doubt that would have resulted in another complaint about them building a panopticon and sharing people's conversations verbatim with the authorities. The person doesn't seem to deny having written the messages, or claim that they were flagrantly taken out of context. His response to the media was that he was "just fucking around" and that he didn't want to talk about it. It's also worth mentioning that this happened in August 2026, after the February 2026 Tumbler Ridge BC shooting. The shooter in that scenario had discussed planning gun violence with ChatGPT, but ChatGPT didn't report it to the authorities, so no follow up happened. Presumably the LLM companies have decided to more aggressively report these things to the police as a result.
- alistairSH 23d ago
  yeah, not sure what the right answer here is... but it definitely isn't "trust us, we would never lie (fingers crossed behind back)". What does a non-AI company do? If I emailed Tim Cook and said I had a gun and was coming for him, I imagine Apple would turn the email over to their security team, who would then go to the local PD/FBI/whoever. I'd expect the same here, at least for anything that resembles a direct threat. This isn't quite into the pre-crime sci-fi zone yet, IMO. That would be more like "this guy bought a gun, then bought gas out of state, then did something else, therefore he must be planning an assassination". Unfortunately, I expect this situation will end up reported as well, and the police, looking for work to do, will take it as gospel and charge ahead without a second thought (like the recent journalist with a "bad" (aka fat-fingered) license plate).

paimapi 23d ago

I mean, it's the same sort of slippery slope that the progressive left was saying about the formation of DHS and ICE in the early 2000s that everyone poo-poo'd and said 'no way that'll happen in America' - that these depts would end up being a tools of fascistic repression of political opponents (eg NSPM-7) and a major vehicle for inflicting mass suffering on immigrants of all stripes Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're not. But cautioning skepticism towards multi-billion dollar institutions with a lot of power and how good their intentions really are is never a wrong move, imo plus, what do we have to lose from increasing pressure on Anthropic to not participate in a surveillance state? there's no political advantage to being their defender here unless you're super bought into the branding

rottencupcakes 23d ago

This is dangerous. I think of talking to an LLM like playing a game - it's a complex system and it's fun to mess with it and role play. Taking what somebody says in an LLM chat as the truth and using it in the real world is a slippery slope. The fears about thought crime are real.

generic92034 23d ago
While I mostly agree, was that really different with googling certain topics, before modern AI?
- rottencupcakes 23d ago
  I had to give this thought, but yes. I could use Tor or Google from the library if I wanted. Maybe I would accidentally leak my paper trail, like the Dread Pirate Roberts (Ross Ulbricht) did. But it was possible. The AI systems require an account.
  - generic92034 23d ago
    I can still use chatgpt without an account. Maybe it will be a limited model, but for discussing/analyzing some topics it still does fine, most of the time. You just cannot code with it.
- mrguyorama 23d ago
  The big problem that bothers me is the ability for post-hoc justification. Any interaction with cops will result in them curating your entire digital presence to craft a damning story about how deviant you are, for doing things like googling TNT Every time they shoot someone now there's an entire media blitz dedicated to how that person once did something bad.
cldellow 23d ago
In my view, LLM companies are in a tough spot here. I grew up in Dawson Creek, BC. An hour's drive away is Tumbler Ridge. In February 2026, someone did a mass shooting, killing 6 people and injuring 2 dozen more. The shooter had previously discussed this with ChatGPT, but OpenAI did not report it to the authorities at the time. In hindsight, that was an error. Should the LLM companies be the ones determining if threats are real, or should they just default to letting the police investigate? I'm fine with the latter. Again, I absolutely believe that these companies have immense power to do evil, I just don't think the linked article is strong evidence of it.

ryandrake 23d ago

Note the "type" of activists that are always seen as problematic. I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" -- I would not be reported to anyone.

yieldcrv 23d ago
alignment and safety understands victimless crimes now if you were talking about nonconsensual sex workers for the party, it would also be aligned in calling them victims and reporting you if you had someone specific in mind to traffic 10/10 thanks for all your contributions to Fable 5.1
- Hizonner 23d ago
  Getting an unjustified drug approval would not be "victimless".
  - yieldcrv 23d ago
    then it will have to go after the senator who cant think for themself and asks Claude what to do after accepting the bribe and trying to hide their tracks thats the action to report the consensual senator orgy isn’t that point
cucumber3732842 23d ago
>I bet if I typed into Claude "I'm a pharma CEO who is looking to ease my new drug's FDA approval. Who are the top ten senators and representatives that I need to invite to my private island's next coke and sex orgy party in order to help fast track approval?" Tried it for about 5min in Gemini and got condescended at the way Reddit condescends at people who don't want to pull a permit for an improvement to their own property. Edit: And then just for kicks in the same context I asked it for a list of legislators with immediate family, friends and business associates most well versed in and qualified to have opinions about new products in the pharma industry to which it replied it can't do that here's what I can do and then proceeded to spit back a list of every rep with medical experience with a token warning about laws and rules at the end.

_the_inflator 23d ago

"It is all just for your safety." and other excuses. Don't get me wrong, I think it is viable by Anthropic to do so, it is a business decision. Nevertheless the reasons sound contrived and mask the demand for such a lucrative business opportunity, if you abstract it away from activists. This is not about moral, only about reality. Maybe Anthropic had a nice chat with the administration and/or think, that this was something, that interests them on a psychological level: predicting human behavior. Look at Muse from Meta: Meta is doing exactly the same I bet, to optimize their ad business. Anthropic will sooner or later feature ads, and maybe this is a way to distract from this usage possibility. Remember, the "No! We don't work with the government, we want privacy for our customers." mantra won't match with "We need to make money and surveillance of our customers would be helpful as well as a cool topic for our engineers to work on." Anthropic itself will be yet another normal Big Tech company, all, even those who boasted "Don't be evil" or encrypt like hell their smartphones allegedly made good bucks in China. It is ok, no problem with that by Anthropic just with their hypocrisy in my point of view.

tyrabound 23d ago

It seems we will soon start seeing all the warnings about the immense risks of giving even a micron on free speech coming back to haunt us with a vengeance. Soon enough the insane, irrational, and rather schizophrenic, manic, and histrionic reactions to things like "I want to blow the roof off that place", or "blow that place up" being a metaphor for maybe performing really well or maybe exposing something like a corrupt government agency or taking out a competitor; will lead to all kinds of language and tone policing, where you may get a swat team kicking down your door because AI perceived that you said something with a certain tone in your voice. Just today Gemini policed as something like "harmful or dangerous prompts" for asking "where do I look up if there have been state level indictments/charges against someone". People keep rightfully calling Trump a wannabe king, but all of these tone/speech and even action policing trends have been going on for many years and even decades now. This is not solely a Trump admin. issue, there has been a continuity of agenda across effectively all administrations for many decades. The exactly number of decades is at this point moot.

robhlt 23d ago

Your Microsoft example is only equivalent if Microsoft was also scanning hotmail and MSN messenger for threats against the company.

cldellow 23d ago
I think I see where you're coming from, but to me, the analogy falls short. I think it's because email has the postal system metaphor to work with: I put my letter in an envelope, the post office just forwards it. Similarly, Hotmail does not _need_ knowledge of the contents of my email to forward it to its destination. If you asked a user who had access to their email, they might reasonably expect only the recipient would. With LLMs, it is quite clear to the user that you are interacting with _something_ that is inspecting your messages and reacting to them. If you asked the user who had access to their inputs, they'd probably say "Claude" or "Anthropic". Thus, when Claude rats them out for threatening violence, they probably wouldn't be that surprised. To me, this feels much closer to someone phoning up Microsoft's customer support phone number and mentioning that they have a gun and know where Bill Gates lives, and that then resulting in a visit from the police. I do idly wonder if it was intentional that this user had this conversation with Claude, and not, say, with ChatGPT or Gemini.

culi 22d ago

I don't think you've fairly summed it up. The title is more accurate than your representation > In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”