I trust people until they give me cause to do otherwise.
I asked Claude: "If a company has a privacy policy and says they will not train on your data and then decides to change the policy in order "to make the models better for everyone." What should the terms be?"
The model suggests in the first paragraph or so EXPLICIT OPT IN. Not Opt OUT
Seems like an excessively draconian interpretation of property rights.
It makes no sense to put stuff up on the internet where it can freely be downloaded by anyone at any time, by people who are then free to do whatever they like with it on their own hardware, then complain that people have downloaded that stuff and done what they liked with it on their own hardware.
"Having machines consume large volumes of data posted on the Internet for the purpose of generating value for them without compensating the creators" is equally a description of Google.
I don't disagree regarding Google, I also think they exploited others IP for their own gain. It was once symbiotic with webmasters, but when that stopped they broke that implied good faith contract. In a sense, their snippets and widgets using others IP and no longer providing traffic to the site was the warning shot for where we are now. We should have been modernising IP laws back then.
After seeing the harm done by the expansion of patent law to cover software algorithms, and the relentless abuse done under the DMCA, I am reflexively skeptical of any effort to expand intellectual property concepts.
Is there someone who has read the whole internet? Can we all be there friend?
The entire basis of fair use is scale matters.
Which is just to point out that the world wide web is not its own jurisdiction, and I believe AI companies are going to be finding that an ongoing problem. Unlike search, there is no symbiosis here, so there is an incentive to sue. The original IP holders do not benefit in any way. Search was different in that way.
The cynic in me wonders if part of Anthropic's decision process here was that, since nobody believes you when you say you're not using their data for training, you may as well do it anyway!
Giving people an opt-out might even increase trust, since people can now at least see an option that they control.
This is why I love-hate Anthro, the same way I love-hate Apple. The reason is simple: Great product, shitty MBA-fueled managerial decisions.
I check when I start using any new service. The cynical assumption that everything's being shared leads to shrugging it off and making no attempt to look for settings.
It only takes a moment to go into settings -> privacy and look.
Because they already used data without permission on a much larger scale, so it's a perfectly logical assumption that they would continue doing so with their users?
They’re assuming that Anthropic that is already receiving and storing your data, is also training their models on that data.
How are you supposed to disprove that as a user?
Also, the whole point is that companies cannot be trusted to follow the settings.
Do you have any reason to think this does anything?
I know once you delete something on Discord its poof, and that's the end of that. I've reported things that if anyone at Discord could access a copy of they would have called police. There's a lot of awful trolls on chat platforms that post awful things.
That's not what Discord themselves say, is that coming from Discord, the police or someone else?
> Once you delete content, it will no longer be available to other users (though it may take some time to clear cached uploads). Deleted content will also be deleted from Discord’s systems, but we may retain content longer if we have a legal obligation to preserve it as described below. Public posts may also be retained for 180 days to two years for use by Discord as described in our Privacy Policy (for example, to help us train models that proactively detect content that violates our policies). - https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/5431812448791-...
Seems to be something that decides if the content should be deleted faster, or kept for between 180 days - 2 years. So even for Discord, "once you delete something on Discord its poof" isn't 100% accurate.
Yes, of course, to both of those. Discord is a for-profit business with limited amount of humans who can focus on things, so the less they can focus on, the better (in the mind of the people running the business at least). So why do anything when you can do nothing, and everything stays the same? Of course when someone has an warrant, they really have to do something, but unless there is, there is no incentive for them to do anything about it.
- Google: active storage for "around 2 months from the time of deletion" and in backups "for up to 6 months": https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention?hl=en-US
- Meta: 90 days: https://www.meta.com/help/quest/609965707113909/
- Apple/iCloud: 30 days: https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/delete-files-mm3b7fcd...
- Microsoft: 30-180 days: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/assurance/assur...
So if it ends up that they are storing data longer there can be consequences (GDPR, CCPA, FTC).
But including paid accounts and doing 5 year retention however is confounding.
The question is: how does that affect their choices. How much ends up being gated what previously would have ended up in the open?
Me: I am using a local variant ( and attempting to build something I think I can control better ).
Probably that people accused it of being sycophantic and they have tried to adjust it but they dodn't do it well. It rather criticize and make assumptions about my behavior rather than keeping it technical. Ha!
I prefer gemini. Seems a bit stressed always assuming that I might be frustrated by its answers which is also weird to assume vut it is not straight disrespectful at least.
So I am back to testing chatgpt. I keep changing.
Anthropic PR: "Ma'am, you opted IN to training on your therapy sessions and intellectual property and algorithms and salary and family history!" Don't you remember the modal???
The Modal: https://imgur.com/afqMi0Z
I still expect that our conversations will not leave the premises (ie end up on the internet), because that would be something else, but other than that, I knew what I signed up for.
So yeah, annoying, but they handled it well.
I wonder on how much they can rely on the data and what kind of "knowledge" they can extract. I never give feedback and most time (let's say 5 out of 6) the result cc produce it simply wrong. How can they know the result is valuable or not?
So your silence can be used as a warmish signal that you were satisfied. (...or not. Depends on your usage fingerprint.)
At the end of the day it doesn't matter. You got the wrong answer and didn't complain, so why would they care?
Legally, I don't understand how Anthropic's lawyers would have allowed this. Maybe I am just naively optimistic about these matters? I am a Max customer and I might leave! Talk about a "rug pull" ... and I considering moving to an inferior provider! Privacy is a fundamental human right. Please do better, we have not learned our lesson in tech or society because no one is facing any consequences.
"ccusage" is telling me I would have spent $2010.90 in the last month if I was paying via the API, rather than $200.
But also I do feel Claude Code is quite a bit better than other things I've used, when using the same model. I'm not sure why though, it's a fairly simple program with only a few prompts and only a few tools, it seems like others could catch up immediately by learning some lessons from it.
I upgraded after I hit the equivalent spend in API fees in a month.
Anyway, I’ll block them like I do everything.
But now that you bring up ads, I guarantee you that those will somehow be incorporated in Claude soon.
Did they rephrase the question? Probably the first answer was wrong. Did the session end? Good chance the answer was acceptable. Did they ask follow-ups? What kind? Etc.
Or that the user just ragequit
i would consider internet forums also includes a lot of dumb questions
In 'private', people are less ashamed of their ignorance, and also know they can say gibberish and the AI will figure it out.
Then use the business version.
To be clear, i don't use claude for any of those purposes, it's the principle i am talking about.
Edit: I just logged in to opt out, they presented me with the switch directly. It was two clicks.
Personally, I don't mind training, as long as I have a say on the matter - and they have a switch for this. Opt-out is not exactly cool, but I've got the popup in my face, almost a month before the changes, and that's respectful enough for me.
This said, I've just canceled my subscription because this new 5-year mandatory data retention is a deal breaker for me. I don't mind 30 or 60 days or even 90 days - I can understand the need to briefly persist the data. But for anything long-term (and 5 years is effectively permanent) I want to be respected with having a choice, and I'm provided none except for "don't use".
A shame, but fortunately they're not a monopoly.
That popup was confusing as hell then, because I've read and understood it as two separate points: I've got it that they're making training opt-out, and that they're changing data retention to 5 years, independent of each other. I got upset over this, and haven't really researched into the nuances - and turns out I've got it all wrong.
Appreciate your comment, it's really helpful!
I hope they change the language to make it clear 5 years only applies to the chats they're allowed to train models on.
Disclaimer: not a Claude user (not even a prospective one)
It’s the reverse. This was opt-in and is now opt-out. Opt means choose so when “the default is opt-in” it means the option is “no” by default and you have the option to make it “yes”.
This is what the comment I was replying to said. I took that to mean "you have to opt out (ie you're opted in by default)".
they gave me a popup to agree to the ToS change, but I can ignore it for a month and still use the product. In the popup, they clearly explained the opt-out switch, which is available in the popup itself as well as in the settings.
Feels like the complaint is precisely that people don’t want them to make this change.
> this is exactly how I'd want them to do it.
Sees naive to believe it will always be done like this, especially for new users.
It annoys me greatly, that I have no tick box on Google to tell them "go and adapt models I use on my Gmail, Photos, Maps etc." I don't want Google to ever be mistaken where I live - I have told them 100 times already.
This idea that "no one wants to share their data" is just assumed, and permeates everything. Like soft-ball interviews that a popular science communicator did with DeepMind folks working in medicine: every question was prefixed by litany of caveats that were all about 1) assumed aversion of people to sharing their data 2) horrors and disasters that are to befall us should we share the data. I have not suffered any horrors. I'm not aware of any major disasters. I'm aware of major advances in medicine in my lifetime. Ultimately the process does involve controlled data collection and experimentation. Looks a good deal to me tbh. I go out of my way to tick all the NHS boxes too, to "use my data as you see fit". It's an uphill struggle. The defaults are always "deny everything". Tick boxes never go away, there is no master checkbox "use any and all of my data and never ask me again" to tick.
As we’ve seen LLMs be able to fully regenerate text from their sources (or at least close enough), aren’t you the least bit worried about your personal correspondence magically appearing in the wild?
> The defaults are always "deny everything".
This is definitely not true for a massive amount of things, I'm unsure how you're even arriving at this conclusion.
Within the UK NHS and UK private hospital care, these are my personal experiences.
1) Can't email my GP to pass information back-and-forth. GP withholds their email contact, I can't email them e.g. pictures of scans, or lab work reports. In theory they should have those already on their side. In practice they rarely do. The exchange of information goes sms->web link->web form->submit - for one single turn. There will be multiple turns. Most people just give up.
2) MRI scan private hospital made me jump 10 hops before sending me link, so I can download my MRI scans videos and pictures. Most people would have given up. There were several forks in the process where in retrospect could have delayed data DL even more.
3) Blood tests scheduling can't tell me back that scheduled blood test for a date failed. Apparently it's between too much to impossible for them to have my email address on record, and email me back that the test was scheduled, or the scheduling failed. And that I should re-run the process.
4) I would like to volunteer my data to benefit R&D in the NHS. I'm a user of medicinal services. I'm cognisant that all those are helping, but the process of establishing them relied on people unknown to me sharing very sensitive personal information. If it wasn't for those unknown to me people, I would be way worse off. I'd like to do the same, and be able to tell UK NHS "here are, my lab works reports, 100 GB of my DNA paid for by myself, my medical histories - take them all in, use them as you please."
In all cases vague mutterings of "data protection... GDPR..." have been relayed back as "reasons". I take it's mostly B/S. Yes there are obstacles, but the staff could work around if they wanted to. However there is a kernel of truth - it's easier for them to not try to share, it's less work and less risk, so the laws are used as a cover leaf. (in the worst case - an alibi for laziness.)
I am sure they will have a coorporate carve out, otherwise it makes them unusuable for some large corps.