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And next month you'll need to add on "Claude Database Pro" or you'll just get a working (for demo purposes with dozens of db rows) but completely un indexed database schema and a refusal to optimise SQL requests.

And the month after you'll need "Claude DataScience Pro" to get any Python Pandas or NumPy code generated.

And and and...

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While this is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect when the models are competent enough, half the conversation on places like Hacker News are about all the times an LLM has produced garbage that was harmful to a business either by hallucinations, by deleting something critical during the work, or by hitting some endpoint way too often and denial-of-servicing it.

Right now, the software guardrails in LLMs are useful for the same kinds of reasons factories have hardware guardrails: to reduce the rate at which errors become "incidents".

Just because they sometimes delete the production database rather than sometimes spilling a thousand tons of incandescent molten metal over a factory floor, doesn't mean LLMs are safe enough to be used the way they're actually being used.

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/normalization-of-devia...

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I think you're assuming too much care. Right now they haven't adopted that business model because they don't see it as a viable business model. As soon as they realize that they can lock certain categories of query behind a different subscription they will do that. We saw the same thing with streaming services and basically every other kind of online service -- small, singular subscription followed by a gold rush and then suddenly there's an upcharge for access to every other publisher's catalog of movies.
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This is why I'm thankful for Chinese LLM research. They'll keep us honest.
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Same thing with the weird push towards humanoid robots.

"They can do anything!"

Sure, once you subscribe to the $15/mo laundry package, the $25/mo lawn care package (with the $10/mo hedge trimmer upgrade), and the $10/mo dog-walking package.

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And in the end the big reveal is, it was a dude in VR all along, piloting the dumb things remotely. Every single time, without exception.
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I think it’s just riding off LLM coattails.

We don’t have good world models. We have had bipedal robotics in various POC demo-ready forms for decades.

It turns out that industrial, purpose build robotics is an easier and better market.

I’m still not completely convinced a robot that’s shaped like a human is the best design other than for PR.

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I remember nearly losing my mind at that stupid conveyor belt sorting demonstation because

1. The human beat the robot, but more importantly

2. We've had non-humanoid conveyor belt sorting machinery for decades that beats both

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Isn't this inline with trying to leave no money on the table?

I'd hate it, sure, but it wouldn't surprise me.

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This is an incredibly unlikely scenario
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> What look like tightening "constraints" today are just setting up the upsell opportunities of tomorrow.

I don't buy this, because is predicated on staying permanently far ahead of the open weights models.

If in the future Anthropic fully stops you from doing security research, you can be sure some other provider will sell you an 'unshackled' DeepSeek v8 Pro...

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> I don't buy this, because is predicated on staying permanently far ahead of the open weights models.

In my mind, that fits exactly how the SOTA labs think today about what they're doing, they're all both working towards and expecting to stay permanently ahead of FOSS, otherwise they'd change their tune really quickly, if they didn't think that was possible.

Sure, you might be able to use DeepSeek V8 Pro instead for the same purposes, but that'll hardly stop Anthropic from trying to sell bundles of use cases instead and claim it's "ethical AI", "Patriotic AI" or some marketing terms like that.

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> fits exactly how the SOTA labs think today about what they're doing, they're all both working towards and expecting to stay permanently ahead of FOSS

They are just straight up delusional, no? Or at least, have a vested financial interest in maintaining said delusion until the money runs out. They have to hit the point of diminishing returns at some point...

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> They are just straight up delusional, no?

Well, I guess that's one way to put it. Another is "dress for the job you want", startup culture typically seems to shove people in the direction of "aim big and believe in yourself, regardless of what others say" so naturally you get these companies who seem very disconnected from reality.

I'd also wager a guess that the amount of money makes people's reasoning and perspectives get very messed up as well, for better or worse.

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FYI there are no FOSS LLMs
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> FYI there are no FOSS LLMs

FYI there is and been for a long time. Won't claim they're SOTA, but they exists. From the top of my head, I think Olmo (https://allenai.org/olmo) was pretty early, but been more since then too.

I agree most releases today that claim to be "open source" actually aren't, but that doesn't mean "FOSS LLMs" don't exists at all.

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I believe Nemotron also publishes their dataset.
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>What look like tightening "constraints" today are just setting up the upsell opportunities of tomorrow.

on the one hand agree, but on the other hand think it's reasonable in that they can then verify the person allowed to purchase access to that model is in fact a Security professional and should be allowed to do stuff like crack security.

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So, supposing it's true that these models completely change the security field and humans are ~obsolete other than as pilots guiding them what to crack, you think it's reasonable that Anthropic and OpenAI should unilaterally determine who gets to be a security professional? I hope you do understand that is what you are suggesting.
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Why should anyone get to determine that? Do people really want us to move to an exclusionary guild system? I thought the experience with proprietary versus open source over the past 30 years had driven home the point that closed ecosystems are almost always far worse for security.
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Additionally, even if there is a guild - no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what their capabilities were, that would be insanely dumb.
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Vendors choose what capabilities they create and sell literally all day every day.
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You should read that sentence as

> Additionally, even if there is a guild - no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what [the guild's] capabilities were, that would be insanely dumb.

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But that's not true. Again: Vendors absolutely pick and choose what their customers' capabilities are. Regardless of whether "the guild allows them to." Guilds can't force people to make or sell tools against their will – obviously.

The analog you're trying to describe doesn't exist, which is Anthropic saying nobody else can make and sell an offensive model to "the guild."

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Guilds often very much did assert what people could and could not build - historically.

Against their will.

Historically that is a major reason why guilds existed, actually.

It’s an extremely modern invention that corps have these type of power over their customers.

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You've lost the thread.

Here's your original claim: "no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what their capabilities were"

A carpenter's guild can prevent other people from doing carpentry. That is not what's being discussed here.

A carpenter's guild cannot force a horseshoe maker to begin making hammers. That is what's being discussed.

Your initial claim was analogous to "never before has a horseshoe maker been able to decline making hammers when the carpenter's guild needed hammers"

Obviously they have and any other state of affairs would be flatly insane.

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That is not my example at all, if we’re talking coding agents eh?
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Your claim was that guilds have never allowed vendors to tell them what they're allowed to do.

That would imply that guilds have always had the ability to force vendors to create and sell the tools the guilds wanted.

That would imply that carpenters' guilds could force horseshoe manufacturers to make hammers.

That is obviously not true, therefore your original claim is false.

It's not true for carpenters and hammers nor for cybersecurity researchers and LLMs.

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Bwahaha. You’re really reaching there.

A vendor can still do something, even if the guild wouldn’t allow them to do it, if the guild didn’t have the power to stop them.

It used to be a guild vs a blacksmith (or the blacksmiths guild). Now it’s trillion dollar corps against smaller islands of un-organized individuals.

That’s new regardless of how you try to argue it.

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> basic deductive logic

> "Bwahaha. You’re really reaching there."

No. Customers have never been able to compel their suppliers to make or sell certain products against their will (except in collectivist regimes or like 0.00001% of natsec related instances)

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Not to mention how wild it is to operate under the assumption that they won’t give a license to an LLM that can do illegal actions to someone who shouldn’t have it. Offering it at all is an ethically dicey question.
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Lol, how is any of this illegal?

Illegal or not requires context that an LLM can not ever have, like if it is owned by the user, if there is permission, etc.

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I wish you understood that there are organizations of security professions that are not controlled by Anthropic and OpenAI and that it is a common thing that when companies of any type sell to professionals of any type it is not the companies that determine whether or not the people they sell to are professionals but membership in professional organizations.

As an example the people who sell police uniforms check that the person they are selling to is in fact a policeman (at least in the jurisdictions I have lived in, you may have had a different experience which would certainly explain what to me seems a farcical misapprehension of how modern civilization works)

I mean I just wish you understood, and really that everyone understood, that this kind of three part communication (company selling, buyer, professional organization certifying buyer) is often when buying things that are considered to have security implications.

>So, supposing it's true that these models completely change the security field and humans are ~obsolete

OK, well that strike me as a really crazy level of supposition there.

I would suppose that these models make it easier for people who want to do bad things to do bad things at scale, at the same time allowing people who want to stop bad things to help identify potential targets.

Based on my supposition I would want to stop the first and find a way of helping the second. Also because I have another supposition that the first thing is easier to do than the second.

But you obviously feel differently about this issue, no doubt because of your position of great moral stature and insight, and this no doubt prompts you to wish to me to understand things that from my position seem absolutely ludicrous.

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Like Medeco claims to do with key blanks? I'm not hopeful.
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