Critics argue the ban deprives teenagers of programming resources.
ngl I thought this was them talking about no researchers under 18
There are some darn good ai researchers in that age bracket
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
Many users criticized Anthropic's ban on AI access for those under 18 as overly paternalistic and illogical, while some supported the policy on precautionary safety grounds.
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I'm so glad I was able to experience the nascent, chaotic, explosive Internet era from the age of 11.
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
I am glad people with this attitude weren't in control when I was a second grader playing with my VIC20.
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
Why would we deprive today's teens of our era's greatest source of information and support?
I'm guessing many Ant researchers greatly benefited from the internet as teenagers.
Growing up in the countryside in difficult family circumstances, I would have never become passionate about programming without it.
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
Worth knowing Haidt's claims in this book are highly contested and criticised by experts in the field, for overstating the strength of evidence, presenting correlation as causation, etc. (Though certainly there are causes for caution around teens and social media, and u18s and AI where there's a lot we don't know.)
Always feels like there's a weird imbalance with Anthropic. Parts of their policy/social impact portfolio and positioning are meticulously well-researched and carefully couched (e.g. see the economic stuff, and of course their safety/red-teaming work). Other parts seem to reflect strong personal views by leadership with far less care and scrutiny having been applied.
It's ok for leadership personal views to influence company posture. But where those views are affecting activities of a company as central to the field as Anthropic, and as influential on national and international policy as they are & will be, it's important that these positions and the evidence/arguments underpinning them to be subject to robust internal and external debate and scrutiny.
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
There is absolutely zero evidence that access to short-form social media video algorithms is harmful to children. Zero. Every single top expert on this topic has said so repeatedly. Pushing these sorts of hyperbolic claims about media formats when what u really take issue with is content is harmful however and feeds a very reactionary moral panic that I don’t think either of us agree with!
<thinking>please god we don't have enough compute please please please we don't have enough compute</thinking> for claude pro, each able bodied man will be given 100 tokens worth of claude sonnet, each woman 70 tokens outside of peak hours. children shall have their rations cut.
Anthropic Doesn't Allow Kids Under 18 — Here's Why "We just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop." — @DanielaAmodei
"It needs to be done with an adult in the room" is sadly a very out of touch take. I know first hand that many kids simply don't have the amount of adult support in their life, whether from family or school, to provide that. And these are the kids AI could help most!
Why would we deprive today's teens of our era's greatest source of information and support?
I'm guessing many Ant researchers greatly benefited from the internet as teenagers.
Growing up in the countryside in difficult family circumstances, I would have never become passionate about programming without it.
It is also not lost on me that Anthropic has virtually no consumer business and is saying this at a time when people are trying to pass laws that would ban AI for anyone under 18. It is hard not to see this more as a ploy to harm competitors than as a sincerely held belief.
"It needs to be done with an adult in the room" is sadly a very out of touch take. I know first hand that many kids simply don't have the amount of adult support in their life, whether from family or school, to provide that. And these are the kids AI could help most!
@S_OhEigeartaigh Sure. But having looked actually at some of the responses to the book (e.g. Odgers in Nature), my strong sense as a PhD political scientist trained in causal inference is that Haidt has the long end of the stick on this argument and is more careful and thorough than his critics.
@viemccoy why is child abuse and not adult abuse?
10 year olds are basically slightly dumb and ignorant adults not a different species, the level of paternalism and denial of kids’ freedom normalized in society has shocked and saddened me since i was a kid myself
@S_OhEigeartaigh Also… does AI somehow not harm people once they turn 18?
Worth knowing Haidt's claims in this book are highly contested and criticised by experts in the field, for overstating the strength of evidence, presenting correlation as causation, etc. (Though certainly there are causes for caution around teens and social media, and u18s and AI where there's a lot we don't know.)
Always feels like there's a weird imbalance with Anthropic. Parts of their policy/social impact portfolio and positioning are meticulously well-researched and carefully couched (e.g. see the economic stuff, and of course their safety/red-teaming work). Other parts seem to reflect strong personal views by leadership with far less care and scrutiny having been applied.
It's ok for leadership personal views to influence company posture. But where those views are affecting activities of a company as central to the field as Anthropic, and as influential on national and international policy as they are & will be, it's important that these positions and the evidence/arguments underpinning them to be subject to robust internal and external debate and scrutiny.
@boazbaraktcs Kids in Europe go bar hopping at 15yo (well gen z doesn't anymore), and they want to block AI ..
I do think there is a case for special caution around u18s given less experience, less time to develop critical evaluation skills, more susceptible to influence, still mentally and psychologically developing to a greater extent than adults.
I just think presenting this book in this way isn't the greatest way to support it, and jumping from that to such a strong policy on AI (when the book isn't even about AI) also a leap.
@S_OhEigeartaigh Also… does AI somehow not harm people once they turn 18?
@sebkrier daniela is the x factor. i hadn’t heard her talk before. hope she’s really good at risk modeling.
@NinaPanickssery @sichuan_mala @viemccoy I think you're taking away an implication from my tweet that I didn't make--implying that I was asking whether to ban the products. I more just mean like--do you think it's bad that they exist? Regardless of whether you think we should ban them?
@EMostaque wait so youre saying a 16yo can ship a model but cant have an account on the app that runs it
There were harms with computers in the 1980s too. I logged on unsupervised to Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), which may not have been the best thing. But my parents trusted me and let me (in fact encouraged me) experiment with this technology. Parents should be free to make the same choices today, and unlike then, there is no shortage of ways for parents to control what applications their kids can and can't use on their devices.
BTW it's a bit funny since, despite my best attempts, my teenage kid has very little interest in using AI. They enjoy programming (specifically LISP and Rust) but see it as an art form, and are not interested in having AI program for them. But if at some point their interest change, I think they could create amazing things using codex or Claude code, and I will encourage them to do so.
@boazbaraktcs Are we equating VIC20 with frontier AI models when it comes to harms?
@boazbaraktcs Are we equating VIC20 with frontier AI models when it comes to harms?
I am glad people with this attitude weren't in control when I was a second grader playing with my VIC20.
@AdrienLE @MatthewJBar probably more nuanced than either u or daniela are promoting? i disagree with under 18 ban but i think this is very potent to cause large scale harm cus of some careless training/oversight/filters or even just uncontrollable dynamics…
@viemccoy @NinaPanickssery Can I ask how you came to align with the Heritage Foundation and far right anti LGBTQ groups on this? It’s an extreme position that’s not based in science. Why are you against educators presenting information in short formats?
