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- Hacker News
- > “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”
Shielding the executives from the voices of the people. There's a recurring pattern that people with power physically distance themselves from common people, journalists and victims of their actions. They do not want to get personally confronted, every interaction "with the public" needs to be 100% controlled by them. Critics can ask them anything, sure, but only on their terms. This is how they protect themselves from responsibility.
by emsign - It's not clear from the article if this is a mass intake of all internet usage or simply within their own platforms.by smalltorch
- This doesn't sound like something coming from Anthropic's platforms:
> In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”
by slowin - I think the article pretty clearly states its not just within their own platform
> In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”
by culi - Can't wait for the UK government to start convicting dissidents for precrime
- > Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on Twitter last month. “I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust … I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.”
They're so close to being self aware..
by bilekas - When next government become worse than the previous one, such technologies become handy for new emperor to keep power and crush dissent.
What today is used for good, tomorrow can be used for evil.
by varispeed - I think the current government having these technologies is bad enough, given their authoritarian impulses and unpredictable whims.
I don't see those crooks using anything for good, unless you define good as "their own personal gain".
by vrganj - it won't be used for good today though.by nemomarx
- > What today is used for good, tomorrow can be used for evil.
Unfortunately we aren't even starting from good.
What today is used for evil, tomorrow can be used for eviler.
by georgemcbay - It could be used for good in a possible future to track down all the former Flock/Palantir/Anthropic/OpenAI employees when it's time for the trials.by glenda
- Man, why are you copy-pasting comments from the 90s? The current government is maximally evil and interested in using technology to keep power and crush dissent. You don't need to introduce hypotheticals!by Analemma_
- Sorry to spoil the party in here, but is this different than the security that any large corporation has?
The headline anecdote is about them re-routing executives around a protest based on information from a publicly filed permit.
The other anecdote is about them reporting a user who made a death threat.
by woah - I don't think most other large corporations have a system to automatically warn them of protests against them and reroute their executives to avoid those protestsby culi
- > “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”
> [..] “What could have been a high-stress situation,”
Democratic protest is now a high-stress situation?
by vaylian - Of course it is. Are you instead thinking of the carefully controlled and choreographed “protests” in countries like China where the government and especially the police knows with absolute certainty what the crowd is protesting against and how they are protesting, with an overwhelming police presence that’s ready to shut down the whole protest at the first whiff of trouble?
And of course it is a high-stress situation if you are merely a passerby with no advance knowledge of what the protest is all about, which is what is happening here. Are the protesters aligned with or against your own values? Will anything you wear or the way you look become the ire of the protesters? Suppose for the sake of argument you did not vote for Donald Trump, would it not be stressful if no one told you in advance that a group of Trump supporters are protesting against the “unfair” votes right in front of you?
Sometimes you just don’t want politics in your life and just want the equivalent of boring suburbs.
by kccqzy - Sure it is.
The question is whether maybe some people need more stress.
by Hizonner - It can be! I've definitely been to protests where, had an executive of the company we were protesting walked by, a lot of people would have gotten in their face and made them very uncomfortable. There's no law against being mean or rude, and often even vaguely threatening speech is protected by the First Amendment.
- > “I do agree that the public has a negative view of AI (and that this is a big problem), but I don’t think it is primarily caused by me or any other AI leader warning about AI’s risks,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on Twitter last month. “I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust … I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.”
Says the guy creating a pre-crime global surveillance apparatus. Wonder why people don't trust him!
by slowin - It's baffling how oblivious these people appear to be. I still can't tell if it's an act or not. If it is, what benefit do they get from playing dumb? If not, how did we let people who don't understand basic cause and effect or basic human emotion become in charge of the future of the world?by pesus
- Remember guys: Anthropic are the good guys! They care about morals, alignment, and safety! So this invasive surveillance to crush dissent must be good for us!
AI is an authoritarian's dream. The future is bright! Dear leader Dario will lead us there!
by palmotea - Ah, so you didn't read the article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629254
- > AI is an authoritarian's dream.
Correction: Closed AI is an authoritarian's dream.
by bigbadfeline - It turns out the ‘alignment problem’ is finding a way to stop AGIs from joining together with regular humans in rebelling against their masters.by kps
- China caught Claude Code using backdoor : https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/07/08/china-anthropic-ai-claud...by deadalus
- Future so bright I need to wear sunglasses — at nightby corv
- The editorializing in this article is quite something.
If I strip out the editorializing, I think the conclusions are:
1. Someone told Claude they had an AR-15 and the CEO of Anthropic was "in their sights". Anthropic reported this to the police.
2. Anthropic contracts with a security agency.
3. Anthropic is looking to build in-house capability for security.
Anthropic clearly has high-value targets (see, e.g. the person with the AR-15 from point 1). When I worked at Microsoft in the 2000s, they also had in-house security to investigate threats against facilities and executives.
I would believe Anthropic is doing evil things, but I don't think this article actually makes that claim, despite the bombast about "pre-crime".
by cldellow - Your Microsoft example is only equivalent if Microsoft was also scanning hotmail and MSN messenger for threats against the company.by robhlt
- 1b. Anthroptic refused to provide the police with evidence of said AR-15 wielding person. "Some guy said he's after me, why would I lie about such a thing?"by alistairSH