It should catch normal people becoming unstable so that they can receive help. It is just highly unfortunate that the US legal system works in ways where now this woman's name is public.
___
Of course, we also want purely private tech, but that needs a certain level of merit and sanity filter.
Do we, though? What if someone started an AI company that uses end-to-end encryption to make it impossible for anyone but you to access your data? Personally, I would switch to it in a heartbeat assuming it's competitive with the other products. I don't think it's the tech companies' job to surveil the population and prevent crimes. That said, I'm not necessarily against Anthropic or other companies reporting suspicious activity if their existing systems are detecting it. I'm just not sure we want every product to be forced into that data model.
Your follow-up about purely private tech seems to contradict your first statement. We can either have privacy or surveillance, not both.
Why wait for a company to build it? Get your own local hardware like I did and have those guarantees because YOU set it up.
Even if open models were competitive, it's still typically going to be more expensive than a cloud provider because of low utilization and higher purchase price.
You use benchmarks, you test, and because YOU'RE the sysadmin you know what weights are running at what time, it's very visible. You can airgap the hardware and be guaranteed it won't change over time. And, frankly, degradation over time doesn't seem to be what's happening with the open models.
That is correct! And exactly my point.
We want both, but, on paper, that is impossible. But in reality, we make it sorta mostly happen anyway, through making the easy defaults not private, and the private stuff not easy.
This is not ideal, because [various reasons I do not need to tell you], but it has proven to be the best we can do to mostly achieve both goals.
Kinda like how capitalism isn't great but just the least worst option we've found so far.
___
The actual fundamental underlying problem being that not all people are equal, but we kinda have to pretend they are, because not doing so leads to fascism and other terrible stuff.
But we kinda also do not want to fully pretend that, because doing so leads to yet other terrible stuff.
Hence the quadruple-speak and contradictions to kinda sorta somehow have a somewhat functioning reality.
A lot of people causing issues are people that can't make sense of many things (like many terrorists). They get a fixed idea and they end up doing something bad. You would catch those with some (basic) surveillance.
A lot of normal people (not wanting to cause issues) might benefit from some privacy, if they understand what are the trade-offs (like government overreach). They can then use a slightly more complex tech.
We would still remain with the couple intelligent but sociopaths (think Unabomber style), but I think no solution can fix all cases.
Back to LLM chats: A system that can declare her "unstable" is also one that can permaban you from all air-travel because you "privately" said unflattering things about Dear Leader.
I urge those people to share their full information from banks, companies (salaries, agreements, contracts), full health information and share publically all the texts they ever wrote (incl. as teenagers) and all the photos they have taken. And give away all the passwords to all of the services so people could check that they are truly clean. Just to be sure, just for everyone's security, right?..
In a old happy little idealised village, it became known quickly, who started to behave oddly and timely intervention could happen. In the modern anonymous mass cities?
No one (wants to) notice the madmen scheming in his isolated flat, surrounded by strangers. Until he explodes.
Unfortunately I also don't trust our government agencies with the surveillance - because they ain't transparent either and the self surveillance seems broken.
" "I'm going to kill that guy", which for non-autists means "that guy was really annoying" you should be reported."
And unfortunately there are lots of real threats being made under the disguise of humor. And much harder to separate im text. So maybe don't talk of murdering people in general, AI surveillance or not?
But in this reality, sure, rather surveil everyone with a baseline level and surveil dangerous ones gradually more. This is roughly how it works today .. just not very good. And with too many exceptions for the powerful.
There are trade offs. ISP effectively is like driving on a highway, everyone can see where you are going but not what is inside the car. Id like these AI chats to be the same but they are not.
LLMs aren't email or file storage. AI labs aren't just shuttling bytes around, they're interpreting those bytes and taking action based on them. These models _already_ react viscerally in response to users saying disturbing things: the only practical difference is the ability (or obligation) for the model to escalate that concern. I'm not sure the ethics we hold AI companies to should be different than if a human being was typing out the responses.
Privacy is obviously hugely important, but this isn't the government surveiling every message. It's companies having an obligation to flag real, credible threats according to the law, which is a very different problem space.
AI companies have no accountability as proven by the hugging face incident. And if they did, it would be the same old LLC non person taking ownership with a big slap on the wrist.
You are also wrong again that this literally is the gov surveying every message just like it is with them looking at your texts or google search. E2e encrypted messaging is hated because it cant be automatically surveyed. The idea it needs to be for law does not hold up as it doesnt for your human examples either.
I get the attempt here for nuance but still just, no.
People. Humans. We have got to have accountability. Once local llms are closer in capability to what people generally need and Apple has a local secure version of that, it is back to the e2e encryption and gov wanting backdoors arg again.
Almost all of these arguments boil back down to the “if you dont have anything to hide…” which id hope on hn we know is dangerous
In this example there was a real human who reviewed the prompts that were flagged by the model. I can't agree that a model flagging something concerning to a human is worse than a human reviewing absolutely everything.
> AI companies have no accountability as proven by the hugging face incident.
This is already a problem with human systems. See: Vaastamo
Moreover, that's the whole point. You're arguing against accountability. If some kid tells ChatGPT he's going to shoot up his school, and then does, I feel strongly that OpenAI could and should have done something. I do not believe OAI is absolved of responsibility when it's clear they could have prevented death.
> E2e encrypted messaging is hated because it cant be automatically surveyed. The idea it needs to be for law does not hold up as it doesnt for your human examples either.
Your argument contradicts itself. There's nothing that allows a nation state to access an LLM back end but not a system designed for humans to interact.
> Almost all of these arguments boil back down to the “if you dont have anything to hide…” which id hope on hn we know is dangerous
That's not it at all. Your arguments are promised on the idea that messages sent to a third party should be treated specially because there's no human involved.
You might disagree with the idea that uploading CSAM to Adobe shouldn't result in a cop at your door, but you're compelling a group of people to operate software on your illegal content. It's not a dumb file store, it's doing work. LLMs are no different.
This has nothing to do with local models. There's no overlap in what using a service with a ToS implies compared to what you do on your own hardware. If print photos at CVS versus at home in a dark room, those are two very different situations with different expectations.
So... minority report?
Maybe you do; I want my tech to always include secure, encrypted communications. Don't include me in your destruction of privacy with your silly bandwagon!
----
jfc, why is this website full on psychopaths
"The actual fundamental underlying problem being that not all people are equal, but we kinda have to pretend they are, because not doing so leads to fascism and other terrible stuff.
But we kinda also do not want to fully pretend that, because doing so leads to yet other terrible stuff."
other people are not pretending everyone is equal. your power levels are showing, it isn't subtle.
Normal people live prejudice. It's (erm, claude-speak) load-bearing for them, given just how complex reality is and given just how well it reduces that complexity.