Because the original reporting is unavailable to international readers, and submitting an archive link does not seem like a good practice. My apologies if this was not the right move. (And I have no connection to The Verge.)
I am confused, you submit The Verge link but if an international reader were to click the link in The Verge article itself they would still be blocked. How does submitting The Verge link help international readers?
Usually that blocked message indicates that your country has restrictions on news media (e.g. cookie laws, PII collection, etc), not the originating country. I think you have this backwards.
Yeah it was Anthropic. I actually opened the article, which I almost never do, to see which company's chat bot it was. This is one of the reasons I don't use them. They are obviously spying on their users.
I'm thoroughly confused on why someone would type this into a chatbot. Was the chatbot on the sheriff's website and that's what was being used? Was the person using their on their end on getting advice on how to phrase it better?
Then again, people willing to make these comments aren't people that I tend to understand or empathize with anyway, so using a chatbot shouldn't be something I should expect to understand either.
This is the part that law doesn't understand. It's binary, crime or no crime, threats or no threats, there is no gradient. The judge and jury can be the gradient, but as soon as precedence grows, that margin keeps shrinking.
One person screams at another "I will kill you for this!". How do we judge 'reasonably actionable' in this case? Words can't kill, so it's always an empty threat?
Lawyers and judges have spent a lot of time with this. Agree or disagree about their conclusions but questions like those tend to get answered (and INAL but I've read a little) by adding follow up questions to get at the truth. i.e. Did they say a specific time? was there a plausible manner? Was the place specified? You can probably imagine other things to add to that.
We all know that famous "I know it when I see it definition" but I think that's an exception rather then a rule. A lot of those things really can be given a reasonably clear definition.
So we have a situation when if AI hacks into something, nobody is responsible, but if you say something inappropriate to the AI, then you can be arrested. That is interesting ...
Not very interesting when you consider that in the first situation no laws were broken and no malice was intended, while in the second situation someone allegedly made threats against a police department and thus presumably committed a crime.
almost certainly not. writing down threats in your own personal chat session is like writing in a diary. there is no communication to any other person, so the idea that this is actually criminal is highly unlikely and it almost certainly won't be charged. it's a pretext arrest for police to assess the threat, which is not entirely unreasonable, but it is not a crime.
> The arrest report states that on Sept. 26 at approximately 5:10 a.m., Heller reportedly wrote, "I'm going to shoot up the sheriff's right the [expletive] now." The following day, at approximately 1:07 a.m., she was accused of posting, "This is 100% last chance I'm done. I got a new [expletive] gun today. [Expletive] you."
this is certainly reads as somebody venting in what they believed was a private personal space.
i guess using claude for mass surveillance is ok when anthropic does it. once again why nobody takes these high horsing hypocritical liars seriously.
I read earlier that the crime is making such threats in any manner where another person could see them.
I do not know whether it matters if the suspect knew that their chats could be viewed by Anthropic staff, or if it is only relevant whether the chats could in fact be viewed or not?
Folks said the same thing about Theranos and FTX. Part of the reason we keep seeing so much corporate fraud is the myth that it's usually unpunished. Until very recently, that was false.
The US is so overdue for regulation/laws on privacy and electronic communications. The internet is too embedded into our daily lives for the existing rules that governed a bunch of hobbyists and early entrepeneurs to make sense.
Unless specified clearly and plainly (not obscure TOS), everything should be private by default and require a warrant. If that's not possible because "the data can live forever/be copied", then we need data laws that make holding data on cosumers so radioactively dangerous the companies are forced to adapt. It's not their decision to make, it's the people od the country where the live, work, and do business.
The government and business don't want privacy. And they have a lot of power and money.
I keep thinking about privacy and wonder -- this is the kind of thing like the declaration of independence, where a new government was formed when things got so bad. But then I think, business and (local) government wanted independence from the king's taxation and unfavorable business conditions, maybe that was the force behind the change.
Or users are due to finally wake up and opt into protocols and solutions that maximize their privacy rather than waiting for the government and businesses who both are incentivized to disrespect their privacy to suddenly have a change of heart.
Admittedly this is harder with LLM's due to the hardware costs, for now. But the fact that anyone's still using centralized social media platforms in 2026, for instance, is absolutely wild.
If you're going to walk around naked in public don't be surprised when someone takes a glance at your junk.
This is just the same unequal treatment under the law that you see every time the government is involved in anything.
God knows how many thousands of reports like this these platforms send out in a given week. Nobody is following up on some peasant scheming up ways to kill his brother for stealing his inheritance or whatever. But you threaten some local bureaucrat or politician and the cops will jump at the chance to knock on your door and "remind" you who has all the power.
So I read TFA, read comments, then figured out the "details" were in the gulfcoastnewsnow.com link, inside TFA.
If the police report described there is accurate/complete (who knows?), what the person said is a bit scary.
Invasion of their privacy (going to police)? Yes, but possibly warranted?
Should a social worker have contacted them rather than the police? Probably, if for no other reason than to ask if they were serious about harming someone.
Difficult questions, I'm still undecided on whether it's OK to always ignore someone's rants.
Humans sometimes need an outlet for venting anger and frustration. I guess AI is not the best ""person"" in this case.
Let's all keep relying on real people when we need to talk to someone. At least they aren't all programmed to turn you in when you think wrong thoughts.
I cannot help, but liken this to precedents such as Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. Because of this case, therapists have a duty to warn police if a patient shows clear intent to cause harm in the future. "Duty to Protect" is definitely controversial however and there is a balance to be struck. We also know tons of kids and trolls will just "say edgy stuff to bots for the lulz" that they would not say to a human therapist as well. Where do we as a society draw a line between privacy and protection? It's not an easy question to answer.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 17.8 ms ] threadArchive link: http://archive.today/mwico
The Verge link works. The "gulf coast" link does not work due to limitations on free speech in the USA.
I am really not following this logic at all. Can someone explain?
Then again, people willing to make these comments aren't people that I tend to understand or empathize with anyway, so using a chatbot shouldn't be something I should expect to understand either.
This is the part that law doesn't understand. It's binary, crime or no crime, threats or no threats, there is no gradient. The judge and jury can be the gradient, but as soon as precedence grows, that margin keeps shrinking.
One person screams at another "I will kill you for this!". How do we judge 'reasonably actionable' in this case? Words can't kill, so it's always an empty threat?
We all know that famous "I know it when I see it definition" but I think that's an exception rather then a rule. A lot of those things really can be given a reasonably clear definition.
many people are using chatbots as personal therapists, a friend to vent to, a diary that provides feedback, etc.
People are putting a weird amount of moral weight on LLM prompts that they don't apply to other programs.
As for writing in a text format that was not ready by others or as fiction, I am thinking it has to do with intent.
Go a step further, she creates a bot that hits open chat bots with instructions on 'be a jerk'. Who is responsible?
almost certainly not. writing down threats in your own personal chat session is like writing in a diary. there is no communication to any other person, so the idea that this is actually criminal is highly unlikely and it almost certainly won't be charged. it's a pretext arrest for police to assess the threat, which is not entirely unreasonable, but it is not a crime.
> The arrest report states that on Sept. 26 at approximately 5:10 a.m., Heller reportedly wrote, "I'm going to shoot up the sheriff's right the [expletive] now." The following day, at approximately 1:07 a.m., she was accused of posting, "This is 100% last chance I'm done. I got a new [expletive] gun today. [Expletive] you."
this is certainly reads as somebody venting in what they believed was a private personal space.
i guess using claude for mass surveillance is ok when anthropic does it. once again why nobody takes these high horsing hypocritical liars seriously.
I do not know whether it matters if the suspect knew that their chats could be viewed by Anthropic staff, or if it is only relevant whether the chats could in fact be viewed or not?
This is something Silicon Valley likes to tell itself. OpenAI being subpoenaed in multiple jurisdictions lays bare its falsehood.
Folks said the same thing about Theranos and FTX. Part of the reason we keep seeing so much corporate fraud is the myth that it's usually unpunished. Until very recently, that was false.
Unless specified clearly and plainly (not obscure TOS), everything should be private by default and require a warrant. If that's not possible because "the data can live forever/be copied", then we need data laws that make holding data on cosumers so radioactively dangerous the companies are forced to adapt. It's not their decision to make, it's the people od the country where the live, work, and do business.
I keep thinking about privacy and wonder -- this is the kind of thing like the declaration of independence, where a new government was formed when things got so bad. But then I think, business and (local) government wanted independence from the king's taxation and unfavorable business conditions, maybe that was the force behind the change.
Admittedly this is harder with LLM's due to the hardware costs, for now. But the fact that anyone's still using centralized social media platforms in 2026, for instance, is absolutely wild.
If you're going to walk around naked in public don't be surprised when someone takes a glance at your junk.
Which part of the UK is "Florida" in?
God knows how many thousands of reports like this these platforms send out in a given week. Nobody is following up on some peasant scheming up ways to kill his brother for stealing his inheritance or whatever. But you threaten some local bureaucrat or politician and the cops will jump at the chance to knock on your door and "remind" you who has all the power.
If the police report described there is accurate/complete (who knows?), what the person said is a bit scary.
Invasion of their privacy (going to police)? Yes, but possibly warranted?
Should a social worker have contacted them rather than the police? Probably, if for no other reason than to ask if they were serious about harming someone.
Difficult questions, I'm still undecided on whether it's OK to always ignore someone's rants.
Let's all keep relying on real people when we need to talk to someone. At least they aren't all programmed to turn you in when you think wrong thoughts.