Despite what’s being implied everywhere, this ID check page has been there since April. Wayback Machine if you don’t believe me: https://web.archive.org/web/20260415064244/https://support.c...
> As a non-US citizen Opus 4.8 is the best American LLM I will ever have access to. That's no longer up for debate or question.
This is a crazy conclusion for a situation that isn’t even two weeks old. LLMs are not the first tech product that have been restricted by export controls. These situations pass. Administrations change. Technology evolves. We’ve had export restrictions on different chips and even cryptography software in the past. It doesn’t last forever.
This is a strange plea for optimism.
Sincerely or not, judgement is yours, Dario has been begging for regulation. He has been talking about how Claude models are distilled by foreign adversaries. And now the regulation is here.
What makes you think this situation that the CEO of Anthropic is asking for it temporary? Do you not believe Dario was sincere?
How ironic it is that multibillion AI companies are complaining that their models are being distilled (read: used without permission) while the current top players trained their models on stolen data...
We still have to see what will happen when people "uncopyright" Disney movies, Microsoft software, ...
There are three issues here:
1. Identity verification as a way to validate real-personness and mitigate distillation by e.g. North Korea
2. Identity veriiication as a way to limit model usage to US residents / citizens
3. The level of model which will be subject to identity verification, today and as time goes on
It’s a mistake to conflate the three and form a rock solid opinion of exactly what will happen from here to the heat death of the universe. Everything about AI is moving quickly. I doubt Dario would claim to have a perfect roadmap not subject to change.
My personal guess is that just like export controls on CPUs, this will apply differently to different regions, and will change over time. Especially with US political instability and increasing anti-science policy, I cannot imagine Dario or anyone else would want to surrender the EU and other markets to become a US-only company.
But whether I’m right or wrong, one thing I’m not is certain. I can’t imagine how anyone could be in the current situation.
Do you sincerely believe Dario wants Fable to be restricted to US citizens only?
Why else would they demand age sniffing?
I do not want to give my private data to any company, yet alone those hostiles US companies that obey the orange king. Insanity has to be contained, not allowed to spread outside of the USA. So, no to age sniffing.
The UK is also suspect here. I don't understand why they are even worse than the USA here. Someone needs to fix the UK legislation - it is by far the worst. On audits they regularly detain people and pat them down. See Auditing Britain or DJ Audits; the US Audits on the other hand almost never reach that level of escalation. Something is fundamentally flawed in the UK.
The UK has been worse than the US on privacy and basically any privacy-adjacent right for like 50 years, if not longer.
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I’m a US citizen and absolutely will not be uploading additional information just to use a company’s models. This effectively kills my usage of anthropic for anything beyond their 4.8 models.
> I’m a US citizen and absolutely will not be uploading additional information just to use a company’s models.
I can't speak to your specific use of Anthropic's models, but I find it interesting that people will identify themselves (to set up and pay for an account) and provide all sorts of personal (and often sensitive if not confidential) information to these models on a daily basis, but balk at a 5-minute identity verification.
It’s not the five minutes that I balk at, it’s entrusting a third party with all they need to steal my identity. But of course, they’ll never get hacked…
It's not like Anthropic is the only company in the world that would have the basic details contained on a driver's license or passport. Odds are all of the PII required for someone to steal your identity is already in criminal hands.
The National Public Data breach alone exposed the social security numbers of potentially upwards of 100 million Americans. Numerous companies have literally "all" of your personal data and you never did business with them/gave it to them directly.
It's not right but the identity theft cat is out of the bag, which is why precautions like credit freezes, are recommended for all Americans.
But they have all other data as well and this concentration is dangerous.
And to me, it's specifically that that third party is Peter Thiel. Not the guy I want to trust with my data.
How can someone steal your identity? What does that even mean?
It is a legal fiction invented by corporations to pass the blame onto you when criminals convinces the companies to give them money in your name.
Where possible, I believe it's our duty to educate those who know or care little about how their devices work. Unfortunately stats aren't persuasive for my family, but they might be for some as a starting point.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victims-identity-th...
Victims of Identity Theft, 2021
October 2023, NCJ 306474
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/vit21.pdf
These links claim that identities are stolen, but do not explain how.
What happens to the victims, who are now presumably left unidentifiable? How are they tracked if they can’t be identified? Do their families recognise them? How does that work if they were married, had children or something? Does the identity thief just take over their whole life?
As far as I know, “identity theft” is a boogeyman invented by the banks. Traditionally, when someone would go to a bank and get a loan by pretending to be another person, we just called it “fraud”.
The banks realised that it would be nice to get you to feel some responsibility when they get defrauded, so after a bunch of focus grouping they came up with this new term to imply that you are somehow also a victim when the bank gets defrauded by someone else.
I would maybe reframe it as fraud being a natural downstream effect of identity theft. I don't need to steal anyone's identity to forge a check but that's also categorized as fraud.
Identity theft also paints a clearer picture of what is required to remedy the situation. If your details have been pwnd hard enough, you might need to get new government documents entirely in order to protect yourself long term.
If a contractor takes my money to install a pool and then disappears, I don't need to reset my entire financial identity. I think it's worth having a separate idea to describe the situation as a whole and not just the specific vector in which a crime might have been committed.
> Identity theft also paints a clearer picture of what is required to remedy the situation. If your details have been pwnd hard enough, you might need to get new government documents entirely in order to protect yourself long term
Okay, but in the US (for example) you simply can’t do that, and your details are already available to everyone for a dollar or two.
I’ll concede that “identity theft” could conceivably have a reasonable meaning in the context of e.g. Estonian digital identities where you could in a sense steal someone’s private key.
It is because you think the contention is about being identifiable, while that is hardly the case.
Most people understand or at least accept that in order to facilitate payments and a company to follow various laws that are generally understood as "good for all" (like AML and tax avoidance), but require ID to access is not the same.
It is identical to accepting to paying for National Parks car pass or camp ground fees but protesting access fees. Not the same thing.
It is just the standard performative outrage over and over. The same person will be uploading their ID a few days after it is introduced.
So many people have internalized an anonymous audience that they are performing to in terms of what they think the anonymous audience wants to hear that they can't tell what is their own actual thoughts and motivations.
That is why the motivation changes two weeks later and the ID gets uploaded.
Some of us hold grudges on account of performative outrage. Ubisoft made invasive DRM the norm in gaming ~20 years ago. While other companies now do the same thing, I'm still boycotting. Fuck'em.
I'd say before Ubisoft, Valve was the one to really spearhead DRM by introducing online verification to play Half-Life 2. Before HL2, it was almost unthinkable for a game to require Internet access to be played and most copy protection relied on serial numbers and/or presence of the original game CD. HL2 was high profile enough to make people accept the restriction.
Well, if all the data people uploaded to these models provided ironclad personal identification, would Anthropic need to have these identity verification processes? They could have directed Claude to disconnect all non-citizens when the order came, for example. Perhaps they don't to frighten people with that ability. But most likely all the inputs together only add to a rough identity hash.
> Well, if all the data people uploaded to these models provided ironclad personal identification, would Anthropic need to have these identity verification processes?
> But most likely all the inputs together only add to a rough identity hash.
You literally provide your name, email address, address and credit card number when you create an account and subscribe.
The identity verification they're doing is for legal purposes. Even if they have a way to take your name and IP address and figure out who you are with near-absolute certainty (including through the use of third-party databases), they're doing this so they have a legally-defensible process by which identities were established.
> You literally provide your name...
Not if you are using through your employer.
> they're doing for legal purposes
The USA is becoming a Banana Repulic. Having grown up in one, you end up learning that "the law" is never meant to be used for the benefit of the people but only to give the veneer of legitimacy for the authoritarian abuse by those in power.
“To my friends, anything; to my enemies, the law”: https://www.undp.org/latin-america/blog/graph-for-thought/%E...
Differential application of the law has been a part of American society for a very long time. I suppose you could argue that it's more brazen and accepted (or even celebrated in some cases) these days, but that could also be a function of people just being more willing to see it because America's reputation/standing in the world is in decline.
Right, but do you agree then this explains why people are not willing to give their identity details to a company, even if the company is able to deduct/obtain these details through other means if it wanted?
No. I really don't see the connection in this instance.
Many companies are required by law to verify the identities of their customers (for money laundering, sanctions compliance, etc.) and to do so in a certain way they can document.
Thinking that the US is a Banana Republic in which laws are applied differentially doesn't inherently mean that every rule that requires you to go through a process you don't like is unfair/unjust.
It's not a matter of being "unfair", it's a matter of people not trusting the institutions.
And? Yes, people have good reason to not trust institutions these days. But does not trusting institutions mean that you no longer have to comply with the rules, or that every rule is not based on a legitimate concern?
> not trusting institutions mean that you no longer have to comply with the rules
Not if you can avoid it, no.
> every rule is not based on a legitimate concern?
This particular rule is not based on a legitimate concern.
> You literally provide your name, email address, address and credit card number when you create an account and subscribe.
I don't recall Anthropic's payment systems, but I use Paypal wherever supported. I don't think Paypal sends my address, but am not sure. I'm pretty sure they don't send the CC information.
And often, not even the name (e.g. have often had people use my CC to buy stuff (with my permission)).
Also, I still routinely buy stuff from one service that thinks I'm in a state I haven't lived in for over 20 years, because that's the address I provided back then.
So no, generally, sending your payment info doesn't equate to sending them my address.
PayPal sends everything you listed to the merchant except for CC number.
This decision has, effectively, turned LMMs into a supply chain risk.
Before this incident I’d gladly use any anthropic LLM in production features. Right now, this has become a risky decision that can tank my business overnight.
> Right now, this has become a risky decision that can tank my business overnight.
If your business-critical systems rely on SAAS that doesn't have a solid SLA and breach-of-contract provisions that more than cover the damages in the event, you've made "a risky decision that can tank [your] business overnight".
If the software your business depends on can't run indefinitely without getting permission to operate from someone else's systems, then you're perpetually at risk of someone else tanking your business because they decided that you can no longer use that software.
Anyone doing product integrations should recognize it’s a perpetual risk but why stick to the platform that will require US citizenship demands for future models especially when there are other labs with reasonably comparable performance that don’t require this?
Anthropic didn’t have to beg for the government to deem their models a security crisis.
> Right now, this has become a risky decision that can tank my business overnight. If your business-critical systems rely on SAAS that doesn't have a solid SLA and breach-of-contract provisions that more than cover the damages in the event, you've made "a risky decision that can tank [your] business overnight".
I'm pretty sure that a US government export restriction / ban / etc. would count as a force majeure invalidating all the fancy wording you could wish for on a piece of paper.
The only way to actually control is to self manage in an environment you control.
The long term goal of LLMs is to automate most white collar work, so wasn’t that a risk you faced anyway? Like Amazon basics, which took all the easy to replicate goods they saw on their marketplace.
You're way off the mark, and probably viewing this as an American.
If it happens once that means it can happen which means it can happen at any time.
When you feel you're a 2nd class person, or 'other', you're not eager to empower your oppressor, quite the opposite.
> When you feel you're a 2nd class person, or 'other', you're not eager to empower your oppressor, quite the opposite.
Completely agree.
You're acting like you can't just switch which llm you are using in around an hour.
I mean...use opus/fable when you can, if down the road your access gets cut then just switch to kimi or whatever.
Yeah, this sucks, but you're being really dramatic and acting like you can't switch llms with basically no lock in. Getting something like your email cut off would be a real thing to be concerned about, but this isn't that.
Crypto export ban lasted only about 45 years. :)
These are obvious lies. But whatever man, they just updated privacy policy to say they may ask you to verify age or identity.
> These situations pass. Administrations change. Technology evolves. We’ve had export restrictions on different chips and even cryptography software in the past. It doesn’t last forever.
The big problem American policy makers (and business leaders) don't understand is that they tend to minimize or ridicule extremely serious events.
There's a pre-Greenland and post-Greenland annexation threats for European Nato allies, and it is non reversible. EU allies do not forget that the US (the only country to ever call article 5 or to gather NATO allies for operations) has both mistreated the alliance, and has been the only power to threaten militarily EU countries.
Same happens here. Business-level wise, you seem to be talking with a very American-centric point-of-view, like these events are minor and temporary issues and we're all here waiting to throw money at an abusive relationship.
But this is not how we operate in EU. None of us can afford to build their operations based on uncertainty of US export controls. The damage is here and many of us are replacing Claude/GPT subscriptions with shared opencode servers using GLM and DS4.
Might be slightly worse? Probably. But we can work on it, harness it, get experience, and even update back to American models at some point. But we're no longer going to be building assuming US models availability.
> We’ve had export restrictions on different chips and even cryptography software in the past.
But not on a SaaS whose continued availability you'd rely on.
In any case, your optimism is bordering on naivety. The world has seen how the US can easily disregard anything and act arbitrarily - sanctions, tariffs, shutting down access to SaaSes - and this will not be forgotten. As you say, administrations change. Even if next time around there are competent adults in the White House (which really isn't a given), do you really want to bet your business on that not changing 4 years later?
There's a reason why all the big cloud providers are constantly shouting about their "sovereign" solutions. The US has broken everyone's trust and there is no going back on that.
> This is a crazy conclusion for a situation that isn’t even two weeks old...
I think, this is all a culmination of rapidly eroding trust and soft power between US & its allies for the past 3y.
What allies?
You threatened to invade Canada and Greenland.
You surely don't think you're coming back from that?
They will obviously come back from that no questions about it. It’s like an abusive relationship that CA/EU can’t fully eject from, there will always be hope of conciliation because the benefits both ways are so massive and the relationships are so entrenched, it will take much more than DJT and Republicans/dark enlightenment technocrats to completely fracture these alliances.
Agreed. Things are really bad right now. But they've been bad before. We helped rebuild Germany after they started world wars.
> What allies?
> You threatened to invade Canada and Greenland.
> You surely don't think you're coming back from that?
Trump threatened. Those were unserious remarks by an unserious person who's 80 years old. If that was all it takes to permanently demolish those alliances, they were never actually there.
No no, the remarks were pretty damn fucking serious.
And the fact that the US could elect such an unserious and demented criminal, twice is proof enough that there is a lot to worry about. Who's to say who will be next? Or after that?
> No no, the remarks were pretty damn fucking serious.
Trump says a lot of things. It's foolish to take every outrage seriously. It's pretty clear it's just a tactic of his (albeit a dumb one).
> And the fact that the US could elect such an unserious and demented criminal, twice is proof enough that there is a lot to worry about. Who's to say who will be next? Or after that?
Ok, then. If you're serious: kick the US out of NATO. Increase military spending, go it alone. Really treat the US as a non-ally.
Or, you know. Wait for him to leave office or die (he's 80!), and write the Democrats and tell them to get their fucking house in order. Trump didn't win so much as the Democrats were utterly incompetent.
This completely ignores the very real, very serious damage he's doing right now, and the doors he's opening for future leaders. Discounting the dumb things he says is very dangerous. His words could lead to oh, I don't know - an insurrection?
it takes time to build up an army, we are not a unified Europe. I think both are happening at the moment - We are building our military, we are taking over "supporting" Ukraine as Trump is stepping away from that. And im sure there is some hope that the US will go back to the way it was.
Imagine you outsourced your entire company to a third party company and only have a few managers around. Then, you need to move all that support from the 3rd parties back in-house. Its not a task that is easy to do, and if we also take into account the required factories etc that need to be built to support, that takes even more time.
Its something that is happening, we are building new trade agreements with countries around the world, excluding the US. We are working on our own defense packs, and eventually if the US decides to leave NATO, or we form our own alliance, then that will happen.
And Trump was elected with the support and influence of the very cadre of oligarchs running much of silicon valley: Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey, etc., etc.
Elon Musk (not Trump) is actively still weaponizing algorithmic control of X to try to destabilize US "allies". Larry Ellison is doing the same thing with a whole swathe of media companies and TikTok.
The issue is the authoritarianism and patriarchal narcissism of an American-centered global elite who have gotten so used to "winning" they began to think it was God-given right and not something they'd achieved because their winning had (broadly speaking) been in everyone else's interest.
Now that their mindset has shifted to win at all (read: everyone one else's) cost(s) - do you REALLY think that everyone is going to blindly keep following? For how long?
> Trump says a lot of things. It's foolish to take every outrage seriously. It's pretty clear it's just a tactic of his (albeit a dumb one).
And he has also acted on a lot of the things he has said. It's foolish to ignore him.
> Ok, then. If you're serious: kick the US out of NATO. Increase military spending, go it alone. Really treat the US as a non-ally.
What? It's not possible to expell a country from NATO as per its charter. And European countries are increasing military spending, by and large buying, in that order, domestic, European, major NATO aligned suppliers (most notably South Korea), and the US only when there is no choice (so F-35 and munitions/replacements for existing systems). And of course this ignores that current European military capabilities are plenty for European strategic autonomy.
> Or, you know. Wait for him to leave office or die (he's 80!), and write the Democrats and tell them to get their fucking house in order. Trump didn't win so much as the Democrats were utterly incompetent.
I don't think you're getting it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The trust with the US is irreversibly broken and not getting repaired in the decades to come. The American political system is broken beyond repair, and even the opposition to the current wannabe fascist regime are not campaigning to change anything about it. This means that regardless of who's in power next, even if they're the best thing since sliced bread, there is no guarantee the following elections won't bring another bout of wannabe fascists threatening to invade their allies.
There is no going back from that without major political reform in the US and years to earn back trust. AKA not happening. Even the opposition, even the most radical opposition, venerate American political institutions as the works of deities that can only be slightly changed, not replaced wholesale. And, from the outside, the whole system - how elections are done (you need proportional representation, term limits, no janky districts), representative structures (flat two seat per state senate doesn't work anymore, house of representatives having skewed and fixed numbers doesn't either), judicial system (political appointments and elections, and for life appointments, do not work), supreme court (political appointments and for life appointments do not work), etc are overdue by decades for serious structural reforms.
>> Trump says a lot of things. It's foolish to take every outrage seriously. It's pretty clear it's just a tactic of his (albeit a dumb one).
> And he has also acted on a lot of the things he has said. It's foolish to ignore him.
Did he invade Greenland? Bomb Canada? Those are the specific outrageous things he said that we're talking about here. As far as I can tell, he created his outrage and distractions there, and moved on.
> What? It's not possible to expell a country from NATO as per its charter.
So what? You're claiming the alliance is irreparably broken, who cares about the text of a treaty?
Just do it, put your money where your mouth is.
> I don't think you're getting it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The trust with the US is irreversibly broken and not getting repaired in the decades to come.
I don't think you get it, either: how long can you maintain that attitude without the irritant (the 80-year-old person that is Donald Trump)?
Also, you're acting all outraged, but present in your messages (but unacknowledged) are other and more tangible violations of trust, like European countries shirking their military spending commitments and letting their militaries decline to disrepair, because they expected the US to defend them forever for free.
> So what? You're claiming the alliance is irreparably broken, who cares about the text of a treaty
The alliance is broken, yes, and everyone is treating it as much. Kicking the US out, other than being impossible, will only piss off the petulant children.
> Did he invade Greenland? Bomb Canada? Those are the specific outrageous things he said that we're talking about here. As far as I can tell, he created his outrage and distractions there, and moved on
He was damn close to attacking Greenland, so much so that various European nations felt the need to send soldiers there to show they're commited to defending it. It doesn't matter that he didn't actually do the absurd.
> I don't think you get it, either: how long can you maintain that attitude without the irritant (the 80-year-old person that is Donald Trump)?
Geopolitical priorities and alignments take years to shift. So does military procurement. Once the US is no longer reliable, it will take years of reliability before there is a chance to mend the relationship.
> Also, you're acting all outraged, but present in your messages (but unacknowledged) are other and more tangible violations of trust, like European countries shirking their military spending commitments and letting their militaries decline to disrepair, because they expected the US to defend them forever for free.
I'm sorry, but that is just pure grade A American bullshit. It's insulting to everyone's intelligence to spout such nonsense. Various European countries spend to various extents. Nobody, is getting protection for "free". They're all pitching in to different levels (some like Poland, France, UK, definitely more than others). And the US was getting plenty in exchange, most notably bases to run their famous and intimidating logistics. The US definitely loses more out of losing those than European nations that have the British and French nuclear umbrellas if it push came to shove.
It's the fact that he wasn't immediately removed from office that's the underlying problem.
That's not how democracy works. You have responsibility and accountability. These people can and do real harm.
That’s like claiming Iran didn’t ever threaten North Korea, USA etc but only their leaders. Trump is the guy Americans had choosen to decide their foreign policy. Just like Russians can’t claim they are innocent just because of what their leaders do Americans have even less excuse.
What, all of us? I would suggest that Russia's proxy leaders threatened to invade both those places specifically to weaken US alliances and hurt NATO.
So when did we become Russia? Better you should ask, should we become Russia, would we like it? We've only begun to experience the damage of it and I figure part of the plan is that once we notice and object to what's been done to us, it'll be too late.
You are mad if you think we are not the target here. This is not about hurting Greenland, it's about hurting US and people elsewhere should take note because you are subject to the same tactics and the same influences.
Over-reliance on a single LLM is probably not a good idea, no matter who owns it.
> past 3y
since January 2025
it’s been a loooooooong year and a half
US controls on cryptography software lasted _20 years_. If there's something I'm absolutely certain of, and I'm certain of very little in the fields of AI and of politics, it's that Fable will be utterly irrelevant in 20 years time.
> Despite what’s being implied everywhere, this ID check page has been there since April.
Well, irrespective over as to whether this is the case, the blog entry from claude came yesterday, aka June:
https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14328960-identity-ver...
So, why the two months delay here? If they felt all was already said, they would not have had a need to repeat what they wrote two months ago already that mandatory age sniffing is required for all claude users.
What makes you believe this is about export controls rather than harvesting data?
Mass surveillance and all the other that gets associated with mass surveillance
What makes you believe he belives that?
The sentence does not state he believes the ID check is for export control purposes
In fact, earlier in the comment, he argues the ID check dates back to April
Because of this sentence?
> LLMs are not the first tech product that have been restricted by export controls.
Export controls have typically been for physical goods. Don’t remember the last time it was used for an API
You should look up the words "crypto wars". There were absolutely very annoying attempts by the US government to limit encryption, forcing every software maker to maintain two editions of their software: one targeting the domestic audience with no restrictions, and one "international edition" which had to intentionally weakened encryption (as in ship with shorter key lengths).
Have we all forgotten PGP already? (Not an API, but certainly not a "physical good")
> We’ve had export restrictions on different chips and even cryptography software in the past. It doesn’t last forever.
Yeah, in the long everything will happen, from 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 being the winning Powerball numbers to heat death of the universe, but as the colloquial goes "ain't nobody got time for that!"
Once an institution or person has proven that they will take adverse action against you, it is foolish to bank on them again.