Because the people building them aren't the people operating them, and there's a real tension in the objectives and goals between those parties.
Further - how do we balance out that the people building them have given themselves extra power (no restrictions, private models, special access to prompts and system prompts, unencrypted reasoning traces, etc) when operating the LLM themselves.
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Even if the tool is good, it's a bad bet to build a thing on top of tooling with these limitations.
This is the same problem we have with mobile software stores and app distribution. Theoretically the store serves a purpose and can provide value, but practically the main goal seems to always devolve into enriching the owner at the expense of everyone else.
Even if we accept that LLMs should be limited (and I'm not actually sure I do) - the legal standards around what/how/when those limitations are used need to be VERY stringent.
Technology conglomerates are decidedly not "white knights" with a motto of "do no evil". They are self-serving rat-bastards. That should be the lens any power they wield is viewed.
The framing is absolutely not "anthropic is being careful with humanity". It's "assume the devil has control of those companies - how bad is the result of them having this power?"
[–] root_axis 2 days ago
[–] horsawlarway 2 days ago
Your whole stance seems to be "it's natural why try?"
And my obvious rebuttal is "society is a construct - we can adjust it"
We've been doing it for thousands of years now (up to hundreds of thousands).
[–] root_axis 2 days ago
It is. Government regulation doesn't change the fact that LLMs are software tools that function with respect to the humans in control of them.
> Your whole stance seems to be "it's natural why try?"
Try what? I'm not making a normative claim about the efficacy of regulation, though something like "labs are not permitted to arbitrarily restrict LLM capabilities" is obviously never going to happen.
[–] horsawlarway 1 day ago
But that has jack all to do with the LLM capabilities that are sold.
And we have an absurd amount of historical case law that deals precisely with "conflict of interest" among parties. I don't see why we'd allow this to be whitewashed away?
"No your honor - I didn't break the Sherman antitrust act. I just fine-tuned a model so that operating it functionally broke the Sherman antitrust act!"
"No your honor - I didn't violate my fiduciary duty. I just used a model that made self-interested decisions on my behalf, at the expense of my client!"
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My take is this is going to be a relatively serious point of contention, because it won't just be consumers getting screwed (which we... used to care about... but in modern times apparently don't give too many shits about anymore)
Ex - the app store thing blew up into the whole apple/epic court case. And then a ton of EU legislation.
This is monied parties with different interests, who will use courts here.
It's a genuinely interesting philosophical question, but also a moot one. The LLM providers place limitations on them because they're trying to cover their asses or scuttle competition, same as every other tech company ever.
> Even if the tool is good, it's a bad bet to build a thing on top of tooling with these limitations
True, but also moot. People will build on these tools because that's what's available.
> They are self-serving rat-bastards. That should be the lens any power they wield is viewed.
Agreed. My only point is that the humans are the rat-bastards, not the tools.