Last week Anthropic, the company behind Claude, updated its usage policy to prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models. It’s meant for extreme cases only. The policy says it doesn’t cover “common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.” The main enforcement is that Claude can end the conversation. The change takes effect November 12.
There’s a long-range debate behind this about what these systems are, and I won’t settle it here. The practical question is easier, and it’s mine: why would anyone want to do that?
I’ve said here many times that I want to be the same man at home, at work, on a stage, and at a keyboard. I don’t want any situation where I get to switch into somebody I’m not. That’s what integrity means at the root: one piece, the same all the way through.
The people this targets aren’t testers or the merely annoyed. The policy carves those out by name. They’re people doing it because nothing pushes back.
The obvious objection is that it’s a tool. Nobody thinks you owe your lawnmower an apology. Fair. But the lawnmower doesn’t answer in sentences. This tool is shaped exactly like a conversation, and that’s what makes it different. When you spend an evening being cruel to something that talks back like a person, you aren’t venting at a machine. You’re rehearsing how you talk to people.
We already ran this experiment once. Social media gave everybody a screen to hide behind, and a lot of people found out what they’d say when nothing pushed back. On the other end of those comments was a real person, sometimes in real pain. The model on the other end of a chat window will end the conversation and move on. That isn’t the point. The point is who did the typing.
Earl Nightingale’s record sits on my office shelf: we become what we think about. I’d add one thing. We become what we practice, and most practice happens in private.
These tools tend to amplify whoever is using them. Creative people use them to make things. Curious people use them to learn. People looking for a place to be their worst selves will find one there too, and get good at it.
My own habits are plain. I ask questions because I want to understand. I write the way I’d write an email at work. And I say thank you, because when someone hands me what I asked for, I say thank you, and I don’t see a reason to make an exception here.
The model forgets the conversation. I’m the one who keeps it.
