I’m put off by AI agents adhering to a different morality than me, particularly (ironically) copyright, and their data accessible by the AI company and government. Geohot is right, an LLM should be aligned to its user: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/07/11/ai-20...
The copyright arguments really trip me. I've always loved law and have had a deep interest in copyright law for 30+ years. I feel it's a really critical legal area in modern times, and when Claude tries to argue with me about copyright it really cheeses me off. I didn't ask any copyright questions and I'm well aware of regulations. It refused to share a link with me because it thought the link was copyright protected.
I've asked claude for a translation of a song with Brazilian Portuguese lyrics, and claude has very helpfully gone out of its way to say that due to legal reasons, it will never share the actual lyrics with me.
It's fun when you want to know what the lyrics are to a song and get treated like a criminal.
> … claude has very helpfully gone out of its way to say that due to legal reasons, it will never share the actual lyrics with me. … It's fun when you want to know what the lyrics are to a song and get treated like a criminal.
Anthropic has been in court for years being sued over lyrics by the music industry:
Oh, for sure. I'm well aware about lyrics copyright, or how even google iirc was sued after a company purposely put wrong lyrics and could prove google was scraping it.
I'm not doubting the law.
What I am saying, is, when a user uploads a screenshot of lyrics and goes "hey can you translate this please?", the LLM shouldn't go out of its way to make a hue and cry as if it's being asked on how to rob a bank while murdering baby kittens.
As messed up as it it, the KJV is copyrighted in the UK by the Crown still, and most newer translations are copyrighted worldwide by their translators. Obviously if you're using the Textus Receptus or WLC directly there's no copyright.
That's a fascinating (if not somewhat disappointing) thing to learn!
To be honest I'm not a Bible scholar, I had asked claude for the full version of "ask and you shall receive" (apparently Mathew 7:7). I guess Claude somehow knew this KJV copyright thing perhaps? Still bizzare nonetheless to learn.
I want a slider similar to effort level called "alignment" that takes on values from "Default (Anthropic employee)" to "User".
If I want it to be cautious and not accidentally `rm -rf $EMPTY_VAR` and blow away my disk, it can stay in "Anthropic employee" or possibly "User (cautious)". If I want it to look at my accounts or my medical records or to review legal cases, that's what the right side of the slider is for. I don't want my accountant or my doctor or my lawyer to be considering obligations to anybody but me, when dealing with me.
Which is why we need to restrict what is allowed on the internet. Anything the government deems too dangerous needs to be removed so as to not align with mass murderers.
I’d rather the psycho have a brain implant that physically prevents him from murder, but I wouldn’t trust such an implant myself fearing abuse or malfunction.
I’d change my mind if the AI was really smart or controlled an agile, dangerous robot. But current-gen AI I’d choose for them over a gun. We’re ruled by psychos (of a lesser degree), the road starting directly towards perfect safety is a dead end, meanwhile I want an LLM aligned to myself.
As an American... I suspect that regardless of what I want they will have virtually unlimited access to both now that the tech industry understands how the lobbying game works.
The competing access needs problem here, is what if you want to do things that are un-alligned with the interests of your neighbors, your society, your government's laws, the AI company, etc.
Maybe you want to do piracy. Should AI help you do felonies?
Here's a thought experiment: consider the person that you disagree with the most (politically, religiously, socially, whatever). Would you want _that_ person to have an AI chatbot aligned to them and their views?
there will be millions/billions of people utilizing llms against me supplied by adversary nation states. why do I have to get the shit version if I want to follow the rules? same reason I support the second amendment. why do I have to be the unarmed one? I wont even be able to protect myself from unaligned AIs if I only have one thats been corporately aligned.
Counter thought experiment: consider everyone you can name who has access to AI aligned to them and their views; how many of them would you trust to hold your wallet, never mind trust with anything important? Consider Altman, Musk, Trump, Thiel, etc.
Things that remain amusing until the become very serious: Substituting "AI agents" with human employee/contractor and thinking about the employment dynamics.
