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Anthropic nuked a company's access to Claude, stopping 60 employees dead in their tracks — support via Google Form is the only recourse for vague usage policy violation (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 238 points 6 months ago (69 children)

60 employees who can’t be productive without AI?

And this is progress?

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  • [–] 56 points 6 months ago (11 children)

    My company is pivoting hard to Claude for everything, and besides the fact that it's irritating as fuck to use, it has me worried about shenanigans like in this article. For almost 50 years, they've had a "no reliance upon 3rd party platforms for core functions," but since they hired an AI apologist to the C-suite, all that has gone out the window in a matter of months.

    Got me thinking I should warm up my resume...

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  • [–] 45 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Got me thinking I should warm up my resume...

    Don’t wait, start now. The job market is a nightmare and finding one that isn’t being consumed by incompetent C-level AI FOMO is getting harder every day. I work on life-saving medical equipment and AI is being pushed on us for things that could literally kill people if not done correctly. Why would anyone spend 30 minutes using AI and risking people’s lives when I can just write it myself in 5 or 10? Madness. Complete, society-scale madness. The people pushing AI have no fucking idea what they are doing or how engineering works. People are going to die.

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  • [–] 17 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    I’ve been unemployed for going on 18 months. It’s awful and the market is the worst it’s been since I’ve been working (15 years or so).

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

    If you're being forced to use it, just try to convince them to make whatever workflows you use be AI agnostic, and not required to still function.

    As long as you do that, you won't run into this.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    That's essentially what I'm doing right now, and thus far, they still want workers who understand the code. However, my manager has already said that his boss had it compose a few scripts, and he thought he could therefore replace an entire workflow.

    Thankfully, my manager talked him down and pointed out that it still got several nontrivial things wrong and that taking humans out is dangerous when it comes time to push to production.

    But it's concerning to see that the higher ups don't understand what it is and what its limitations are.

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  • [–] 94 points 6 months ago (27 children)

    Your point is well-taken, but this is also exactly why AI reliance is dangerous. Anyone who sees this should realize the precarity of relying on products that can just be locked away from you.

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  • [–] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Like Gmail? Google drive? Slack?

    I'm not defending AI, but I can come up with >10 products that would absolutely cripple the company I work at if the provider suddenly says "Soz, terms of service violation".

    Vendor reliance is dangerous. That doesn't just apply to AI. If the company in OP's message had both Claude and Gemini they'd been okay, so the problem isn't with AI explicitly - the problem is with reliance on services that are critical for workflows, and providers being able to change their mind at a moment's notice.

    In any case, leaving aside where the problem is, the idea that 60 employees can't use Natural Intelligence to do their jobs means there's something really wrong with that company...

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    Vendor reliance is dangerous.

    1000% this.

    It's a Faustian bargain, a company gives up all of their internal IT staff and hardware and becomes completely dependent on a vendor for critical business processes. It's like the opposite of insurance, they're saving some money by risking a total loss of their ability to do business should the vendor pull support.

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  • [–] 26 points 6 months ago (19 children)

    This approach to coding is exactly what creates the problem. They will find out the hard way if they can continue to be productive when something breaks and AI is not available for whatever reason. Does anyone know how to fix it? Is the documentation sufficient to understand what the AI did?

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (15 children)

    To continue with the analogy though, how many architects create things that an engineer takes one look at and laughs at because it’s structurally impossible (hint: a lot). Knowing the deep parts of the code and how it works becomes even more invaluable otherwise you risk Chinese building practices (quick, looks good, falls apart quickly).

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I don't doubt that it is possible to create good code when focusing on programming best practices etc. and taking the time to check the AI output thoroughly. Time however is a luxury most of the devs in those companies don't have, because they are expected to have a 10x code output. And thats why the shit hits the fan. Bad code gets reviewed under pressure, reviewers burn out or bore out and the codebase deteriorates over time.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    But we have to identify this as what it is: an internal policy failure where they abandon proven processes to maintain code quality.

    I guess I'm lucky my managers have not put that pressure on me yet. I do however see developers getting sloppy and lazier so the reviews actually do take more effort and AI rarely catches all problems with a change.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (10 children)

    My friend is a full stack programmer with over 15 years experience with one of the largest financial institutions. So he can handle what you're talking about no problem. But what IS a huge problem is that the reason he has the requisite knowledge now is because he spent years learning best practices by doing the grunt work that's going to disappear. So in a few years they might no longer have people with the skills to do things right and then what you're describing will absolutely happen and build quality will go to hell. The assumption from big tech is by then the models will have improved enough it won't matter by then.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    That’s a hell of an assumption. Since we’re whipping out credentials, I’ve been in IT almost 30 years and I can tell you it’s not going to work like that.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Since we’re whipping out credentials, I’ve been in IT almost 30 years and I can tell you it’s not going to work like that.

    I'm not the person you were replying to but I've also been in tech since 1996 and lots of things have worked just like that. All successful technology starts off barely functional and improves over time until nearly all members of it's intended audience can successfully use it.

    As an example in 1996 setting up a router was a specialty task that required training, by 2016 any moron could buy one off the shelf and have it running in an hour. As another example basic HTML was a specialty skill in 1996 but by 2003 you could do it with Microsoft Word. Smartphones are another example, they went from barely functional Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices which required ridiculous amounts of back end skill to deliver email to iPhones and Androids that any numskull can use for nearly anything at all.

    My point is this; too many people are stuck on the "What use is a newborn baby?" question without realizing that the infant is growing-up at blinding speed. It's also the first technology to carry the promise, real or not, of self-improvement when it reaches sufficient maturity. Assuming that happens all further improvement will be increasingly automatic and happen even faster.

    AI isn't going away and it's only going to get better as time goes on.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I can see, in programming, how the current AI trend is displacing a lot of junior programmers who will not be senior programmers in 10 years due to the inability to obtain experience.

    AI hasn't come for DevOps or SysAdmins jobs either, but it's 'good enough' to do help-desk/tier 1-type tasks. That limits the job pool for new IT workers and will create a future shortage of experienced workers.

    I'm not worried about MY job, I've already accumulated the experience. It's the new guys who are trying to get into support positions, where they are glorified knowledge base/Google searchers, who are having the hard time because AI CAN do search and summarization/RAG pretty effectively.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    Because there's alternatives. You don't have to use the subway if it breaks down, and people have enough brains to take a taxi or walk instead.

    This is 60 people going, "Fuck, the subway is down. Guess I can't travel anywhere, now."

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  • [–] 32 points 6 months ago (10 children)

    One is a deterministic machine on your desk, that you own, to do stuff at your desk.

    The other is a nondeterministic thing somewhere else, that you don't own, to do stuff at your desk.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    That's really an argument against all cloud services, and not LLMs. Although most people do LLMs in the cloud.

    And I absolutely agree with the argument. It's insane to me how much companies will put in someone else's hands.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    In the military we have a maintenance tracking system. It's electronic. We literally bdo drills for if it goes down and we have to resort to paper backups. And there are paper backups.

    Without a computer I could still manage an entire flight line worth of planes, and everything they need. Maintenance, fueling, sorties, etc. What you're telling me is that this company and lots of companies do not have a contingency for if there is a system failure or other outage.

    That seems acceptable? Why? Short of a power outage (and probably not even then unless we can't Jerryrig a lighting solution) we can do all the jobs required with hand tools. It's crazy to think that people don't think this should be a thing.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Hopefully companies relying on other companies like crowdstrike.

    What are we paying for if not to have things work and have backups? I have so many questions about the companies you give your money to and what you think you're getting in return?

    Like. I feel like there's a lot of jobs where email could fail/crash and work could still be done. The whole company shouldn't just shut down because the AI is down. It shouldn't shut down because email is down. That's not just poor planning it's really poor business practice.

    What did they do before the AI? Why (when considering how temperamental LLMs can be) would anyone trust it to such an extent that you're dead in the water if it fails?

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    If the Internet is down for a period of time at the office, I would expect that my dev team is able to continue working (assuming they’re not exclusively hitting a third party API). At least for a few hours, if not days. It might not be the same cadence, but I’m not about to send them home.

    Computers are a tool; AI is an outsourcing. It’s the difference between a carpentry team not having saws, hammers, etc. and having the carpentry team unable to do work if Jose (the outsourced carpenter) doesn’t come in.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Except, unlike computers and the internet, AI is not essential, unless your whole business revolves around it (in which case, good riddance).

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Uhhhh computers and Internet aren't essential either. But they did speed up a lot of things and make new things possible.

    There's nothing I use AI for that I couldn't do myself, but AI can do most things faster and a few things better than me (LLMs that is. Image generators do all their things better than me because I can't art, but I don't use them at all).

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    This is the current web with its social media like life. Say something, be outraged.

    But let's be honest. We really have no idea what to the true story is. There are so many ways to spin a story. Probably both sides fucked up.

    The one thing we know is fucked up, is that anthropic is acting like a startup. If they want to work with businesses they need a dedicated support team.

    I dont know if its because its bern a long day and i am exhauseted but i am tired of being outraged.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Fuck AI and all, but to be faaaiiiiir, if you take away most people's computers they would be far less efficient than someone that did the same job without one 50 years ago.

    In the profession I recently retired from, if they suddenly went back 50 years in tech the global economy would crash, and even a 20-30 year regression in tech would seriously fuck things up until people adjusted. And even then they wouldn't be able to reach the same levels of efficiency.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Yeah, I think this is normal. You can probably say the exact same sentence for any year to have occurred in the last several hundred years. Probably all the way back to whenever we transitioned to specialization for production scaling. You know, when someone figured out you can make more clocks per day if you have a nut producer, a spring producer, a frame producer, …

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