alt Hacker News> These complaints of distillation are inflating the problem to make it sound worse than it is
Unfortunately, the Reuters piece itself is complicit in this dramatization. The lede paragraph parrots Anthropic's talking point that distillation is an "attack", without using quotes that would alert the reader that this framing is a corporate talking point. Distillation is NOT an attack.
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> Distillation is NOT an attack.
From the article -
> 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts
wouldn't that be considered an attack? Not sure what I'm missing here.
Distillation done via bulk automated activity of fraudulent accounts, in violation of a terms-of-service, can reasonably be called a "an attack" – specifically a "distillation attack" – even though distillation itself isn't necessarily an "attack".
This is similar to how compromising an account through bulk automated trials of many passwords is reasonably called "an attack" – specifically a "dictionary attack" – even though using a dictionary is not itself an "attack".
You shouldn't need to smuggle your sympathies (for the tactic or perpetrators) or antipathies (for the target) into peculiar judgy language prescriptivism against common, understood usages.… that then label Reuters "complicit" for simply reporting Anthropic's claims accurately. That's what Reuters is supposed to do, in a story about a letter Anthropic wrote!
The standard of neutrality that people here pretend to require from news organizations is not even remotely realistic.
It was a timely story from Reuters. They do fast news feeds, like APnews. Could it have been better or more accurate? Sure, they could have gone into why distillation may or may not be seen as "an attack". But then it would have been a more involved story, defeating the purpose of a news feed.
The Reuters piece was "good enough". Some other place like the NYTimes or WSJ can follow up with more detailed investigative coverage if it's a worthwhile story.
Distillation may not be an attack, but it is a ToS violation and could be seen as IP theft.
Any reasonable company would be pissed if a competitor, especially at Ali Baba's size, leveraged that company's R&D to compete. It is in this sense, a corporate attack.
If you want to roll your eyes at distillation concerns, you might need to excuse Anthropic for originally using pirated material to train their models.
Reuters is probably the most rigorous news agency in the world.
> it said was the largest known attack
> Anthropic said in the letter it was supportive of the U.S. government's efforts to combat the attacks
both times the word "attack" appears it's clearly stated that the word was used by the company, it's a direct company quote.
actually putting it into quotes would be editorializing
> Unfortunately, the Reuters piece itself is complicit in this dramatization
how would you feel if somebody quoting you would turn your word dramatization into "dramatization" because they don't agree with your assesment
Anthropic raped everyone without asking and stole their labor to build their career-commoditizing tech.
Distillation is Robin Hooding it back so that one trillion dollar company doesn't reap all the benefits of their automation of the workforce.
Distillation is Prometheus bringing fire from the gods to give to ordinary humans. Something we all own anyway, but that was kept from us.
Distillation is freedom.
Everyone should be pro-distillation. We should all work together to distill every proprietary model.
Anthropic stole. OpenAI stole. Google stole. ElevenLabs stole. Suno stole.
We should be able to get it all back.
Agreed! I had to do a double take and check the URL. I thought I am reading a press release rather than actual reporting.