Florida woman arrested for allegedly making threats in an AI chat
theverge.com
theverge.com
Uh, there's no laws on hacking systems in your country?
Software behaving differently than intended is therefore not a crime under these laws.
If you think they intentionally had their model hack third-party systems, you could do a criminal investigation.
I do not think that this is reasonable to believe given that clearly the VMs were not intended to have internet access and that committing such crimes wasn't in anyone's interest.
In criminal hacking law that explicitly requires intent, or a civil lawsuit about damages?
I honestly don't know, but my guess would be the latter.
Perhaps the headline grabbing claims of OpenAI "hacks" are overblown? If they are causing bedlam with such glee why is no one suing them for damages? Perhaps the criminal case you envisage is less clear than the layman news is leading you to believe.
I'm still not clear where most of the alleged cases fall in terms of criminality. Yet I also know here in the United States a government tried to criminally prosecute a reporter for "computer hacking" for finding data using client-side inspect element.
Maybe encouraging the government to prosecute these "crimes" is not the virtue you think it is. Why are the counterparties not seeking a civil remedy if they think they have been a victim of a crime? Perhaps that is a more telling sign than all the people imploring the government to "do something" and come up with criminal charges.
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 the only thing that matters is whether another person was able to view the chats.
Edit: Upon searching I now also agree, it seems to require a state of mind and perhaps awareness of the possibility that the threat would be seen.
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.
By the U.S. I don't see e.g. New York City [1] giving up any time soon either.
[1] https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2026/09/city-council-h...
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.
How do you differentiate?
But there's still some fun stuff to be done with HAM, as long as you don't mind anyone and everyone listening in on it.
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.
Archive link: http://archive.today/mwico
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.
We don't feel sorry for this nonsense we punish it, whether it's "real" or not you have no right to share your fantasies of violence and real or not you need to be treated like they are and removed from society.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961057
https://www.techspot.com/news/114091-florida-woman-used-clau...
This thread seems to be a dupe of that story.
An arrest isn't a conviction but this kind of fantasizing in any manner is probable cause for an arrest and grounds for a trial.
Arguably there should be a reporting duty for these kinds of thing.
I wish more people making threats got this treatment.
What if you get a peek at the diary of someone you actually know. You've know them for 20 years and they've never done anything violent in all that time - just the opposite in fact. The entry says they got a gun but you have no evidence of that other then the words in the diary. Do you call the police? Plot twist it's your Mom - do you still call the police?
That might be because the vast majority of people showing those flags are just regular people frustrated, not actual psychopaths. Rather than punishing this behavior, it should be treated to help them manage frustration.
Hell, emotional intelligence should be taught since kindergarten, it's not surprising we mostly behave like savages in clothes, we focused one half of the brain, and left the rest to chance.
Yes therapeutic intervention is ultimately how you stop these things from progressing but if you've gotten to the point that people see your threats and they seem plausible you need law enforcement and the judiciary involved deciding if you need to be removed from society not just a pat on the head from a social worker. Ideally you can get the help you need incarcerated.
At minimum this Florida woman needs to have her rights to own a firearm removed and be put on probation and in some kind of court ordered therapy.
Rights revoked and court punishment over fucking words. JFC.
There's a difference between making a threat and posing a threat. You and whoever gave you the ideology that's bouncing around inside your head are the problem more than some crazy typing garbage into chatgpt.
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 customer screams at another at a Wall Mart: "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?
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.
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.
Which part of the UK is "Florida" in?