Comment by Aurornis
4 hours ago
> when you only read the threat by spying on them
The AI companies have clauses in their user agreements saying they can review content flagged as harmful. It’s not legally spying.
If you recall previous outrage about ChatGPT being used in cases of suicides or shootings, this is the result. Every time a crime was committed and the police found ChatGPT history about the crime, the media turned it into a frenzy. So the AI labs added safety filters to their consumer plans that detect threats of violence, escalate them to human review, and report to the police.
Spying is not the right analogy because the information was given to the police by a third party which had a EULA saying they would do this. A more analogous situation would be someone reading another person’s diary and then turning it into the police department. There might be some limitation in the law that makes the evidence inadmissible because it was not intended to be shared with anyone, but that’s a separate decision.
Not only that they can review flagged content, but they tend to have separate retention policies for flagged content. Anthropic's is this: "We retain inputs and outputs for up to 2 years and trust and safety classification scores for up to 7 years if your chat or session is flagged by our automated trust and safety systems as violating our Usage Policy."
So don't run for office or anything like that. Someone, somewhere will have a contact that will get that.
>Spying is not the right analogy because the information was given to the police by a third party which had a EULA saying they would do this. A more analogous situation would be someone reading another person’s diary and then turning it into the police department.
This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.
I was responding to a question about the legal case. The police did not perform any spying.
Frustrations about Anthropic’s EULA are a separate matter.
Was it claimed that the police did any spying?
Presumably, Anthropic did the spying and the reporting.
You argued that it is not spying, since the spying may have been made sufficiently explicit in the ToS/EULA.
This raises the question: Does announcing a spying operation mean that it is no longer spying? I've never heard that perspective before.
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Extra steps couched in corporate speak is often the defining line that defines whether something is technically legal or not.
I’m speaking from a functional/ethical framework to be clear. I’m just expressing frustration, not challenging the comment. Could’ve been clearer on my end there.
> This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.
Calling something names doesn't invalidate it. It only invalidates what point you're trying to make.
Well, let's say that you have a regular customer at a bar.
They get friendly and loose-lipped with the bartender over the span of months. Eventually they let slip that they plan on killing their spouse for a life insurance payout. At first the bartender thinks they're joking, but it becomes evident that there's an actual plan being acted upon and someone's life is very likely in imminent danger.
Does the bartender have a responsibility to go to the police?
Depends on the country. In some places, there is no legal repercussions for not reporting this to the police; in some, it is an actual crime in itself.
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Many clankers deny data retention or spying on the user if you ask them. That should be completely illegal.
Then, you can write anything in an EULA but it is not automatically legal either.