The discriminatory measures Anthropic are deploying with Claude Code are unprecedented. For years even authoritarian governments allowed VPN users to use products and services from abroad. Instagram's popularity in China comes to mind. The level of infringement on privacy by Anthropic is unheard of: they track users with methods nobody dared to or was not smart enough to deploy at scale before. It is something new and very, very disturbing.
As someone who was born under the iron curtain of the USSR, I'm very concerned that we are entering a new age of cold AI war where geopolitical nonsense leads to discrimination against people and businesses at scale by the smartest people on the planet who build super intelligent systems.
There is no excuse for spying on your customers and punishing them for visiting or staying in places you do not like.
There is no excuse for punishing citizens of places overseas and disturbing their way of life and robbing them of choice in what intelligence they wish to use.
There is no excuse for being so damn smart and so damn clueless at the same time.
I think Anthropic has to embrace competition and open their products and services to everyone in the world equally. Intelligence is moving to the edge, but the cloud super intelligence is coming and will play an incredibly important role in human lives. It will cure diseases, elevate people out of poverty, create job opportunities throughout this obviously tough and transformative period of human history.
To be on the right side of history Anthropic has to treat their models like the internet that they used to get the intelligence in the first place. Do not tell us you can scrape Hong Kong websites left and right but we cannot use your AI. This is hypocritical and extremely offensive.
The Internet was created for the benefit of humanity and everyone on the planet using it. AI has to be in the same category.
Safety is important. Equality and inclusion are also important. You have to do both.
If nothing else, it's just a better way to do business. You have the best coding model. Let's good people of Hong Kong use it and compete on price and capabilities. Move faster than competition and create more value.