Hacker News

points by nsagent 1 day ago | 0 comments

> Using privacy-preserving methods, we study 207,000 Claude and Claude Code research sessions to understand how Claude is used across scientific fields and research tasks.

Did they get permission to use researchers' data or did they monitor and extract data without consent? Considering the kerfuffle OpenAI generated with their math proofs, you'd think Anthropic would take a hint and be clear that they did the research with consent, though that assumes they got consent.

Seriously, all the industry researchers at these companies went through IRB training during their PhD; have they just conveniently forgotten?

[–] adrianN 1 day ago

Isn’t there something in the terms of service that gives them essentially blanket permission to read you conversations?

[–] evan_a_a 1 day ago

Yep, exactly, this is already covered by the privacy policy.

https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy

[–] nsagent 1 day ago

I called out their experience and knowledge of Institutional Review Boards which govern human subjects research at universities. Embedding consent in a privacy policy would not count as informed consent [1].

Of course, only institutions receiving federal funding are subject to these rules, so companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are legally in the clear. I'm just saying, you'd think they'd have more awareness considering they've all been trained about informed consent during PhD.

[1]: https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/guidance/faq...

[–] l1n 1 day ago

https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.13678