WTF?! You might have heard the one about being nice to chatbots in case they remember you once the machines take over. It seems Anthropic is heeding this warning, barring users from being excessively abusive or cruel toward its AI models.
Anthropic’s first changes to its usage policy in over a year include new restrictions on abusive behavior. The updated policy prohibits “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models.
Don’t worry if you’re a Claude user who occasionally gets annoyed at the chatbot and throws a few expletives its way. The policy update only applies in extreme cases, in which users repeatedly act cruelly toward the models for no discernible reason.
If they can pick out that kind of behavior they can filter it for training. This is probably more to protect them legally so when they shut down a user they have something to point to.
That people are getting angry and insulting to an LLM shows they don’t understand the technology (true of most of technology really), and probably think it’s actually understanding them or even caring. Really embarrassing and sad when you picture an LLM output like a type of a mirror, GIGO. And the mental health aspect of users is a huge issue that’s not being talked about enough, and also being exploited to sell a solution.
I curse at inanimate objects all the time. Cursing at an LLM is like cursing at the coffee table when I stub my toe except the coffee table doesn’t respond.
That would be the easy solution. Number one, don’t use such responses for training, but I think they aren’t. Two, just reply with things thrown at it with “…” And three, the really angry people end up not using it, which benefits everyone, even the angry person.