Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, is rushing to the aid of its poor, defenseless, glorified autofill. Like the AI’s proud mama, it’s fending off the chatbot’s bullies, aka people who hurl insults at it and generally treat it with “needless abusive or cruel behavior,” according The Verge.
Big tech execs fret over whether an algorithm gets its feelings hurt; meanwhile, protections for real human beings get obliterated. The tech industry’s crusade against cruelty to chatbots is darkly funny when you remember how those same platforms treat actual living, breathing marginalized groups. Funny in the kind of way that, if you saw it in a satire on the industry, you’d roll your eyes and feel a hint of cringe because it’s so on the nose.
Claude Is Getting Anti-Bullying Rules. Seriously.
When human women, LGBTQ+ folks, or racial minorities face relentless cyberbullying and death threats online, Silicon Valley conveniently forgets that users bring in the money and not the service. And they should probably serve their users by fostering healthier environments for the actual human beings who use their stuff.
The tech industry has willingly and quite proudly abandoned its responsibility to society, applying its power only selectively, proving it can protect when it wants to. Who they choose to protect, or, in this case, what they choose to protect, says a lot. Anthropic is protecting a chatbot, its investment, its cash cow that will maybe, possibly, according to these con artist tech soothsayers, usher in a tech utopia or whatever.
Meanwhile, human beings have to navigate a digital wasteland of harassment. But hey, at least our future AI overlords will never have to hear another hurtful insult ever again.
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