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netcantoday at 6:08 AM3 repliesview on HN

Hypocrisy is a form of corruption.

Anthropic's IP was created by harvesting and "distilling" other people's IP. Copyrighted materials, and the commons... which they have essentially privatized.

The commercial goal is to avoid competition. One of the main worries for AI is "commoditization" which has come to mean "not a monopoly." To that end, it doesn't matter is the competitor is Chinese American or other.

Their motivation here is clearly protectionism. The argument they make to politicians is national security. The legal argument is IP-theft, violation of service agreements or whatnot.

This is all very dangerous. Commercial interests repackaged as national security can lead to armed conflict.


Replies

trymastoday at 6:26 AM

> Anthropic's IP was created by harvesting and "distilling" other people's IP. Copyrighted materials, and the commons... which they have essentially privatized.

Anthropic and others argue that because LLMs don’t output full copyrighted works word for word - hence their LLMs aren’t infringing on copyright laws.

I think (if this ever comes to that) Chinese lab should use same arguments against Anthropic.

UPDATE: this is slight hyperbole of course, not worth arguing what they actually said. The point is intent and the facts - "The Big LLMs" "distilled" collective knowledge including copyrighted works at unimaginable scale, but it's all kosher and totally not piracy/copyright infringement. Though if you're teenager torrenting an mp3 - you'll get screwed.

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steve1977today at 6:16 AM

Bad China is stealing our stolen IP!

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handoflixuetoday at 6:24 AM

"Copyright violation of a published work" and "stealing private trade secrets" are in fact very different crimes.

Humans have spent millenia harvesting and distilling each other's IP - "the shoulder of giants" and all that, so it's an especially disingenuous take.

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