Thus, I stand to receive about $9,000 as a result of this settlement.
I think that's fair, considering that two of those books received advances under $20K and never earned out. Also, while I'm sure that Anthropic has benefited from training its models on this dataset, that doesn't necessarily mean that those models are a lasting asset.
This settlement has nothing to do with any criminal liability Anrhropic might have, only tort liability (and it doesn’t involves damages, not fines.)
- Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX): Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for orchestrating a massive fraud involving the misappropriation of billions in customer funds.
- Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos): Began an 11-year prison sentence in 2023 after being convicted of defrauding investors with false claims about her blood-testing technology.
- Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani (Theranos): The former president of Theranos was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for his role in the same fraud as Elizabeth Holmes.
- Trevor Milton (Nikola Corporation): Convicted of securities and wire fraud, he was sentenced to four years in prison in 2023.
- Ippei Mizuhara: The former translator for MLB star Shohei Ohtani was charged in April 2024 with bank fraud for illegally transferring millions from the athlete's account.
- Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin: Convicted in February 2025 for a $577 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme.
- Bernard Madoff: Sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He died in prison in 2021.
- Jeffrey Skilling (Enron): The former CEO of Enron was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2006 for fraud and conspiracy. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released in 2019.
- Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco International): The former CEO served over six years in prison after being convicted in 2005 for looting millions from the company.
- Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers (WorldCom): Sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud. He was granted early release in 2019 and died shortly after.
Apart from this list I know Nissan's ex CEO was put into solitary confinement for months.
Who went to prison from Exxon for the Valdez oil spill[1], or from BP for the Deep Water Horizon[2] debacle?
Who went to prison from Norfolk-Southern for the East Palestine train derailment[3]?
Who went to prison from Boeing for the 737Max debacle[4]?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine%2C_Ohio%2C_trai...
Overly punitive handling of accidents does not lead to better safety-- it primarily leads to people playing the blame game, obfuscating and stonewalling investigations.
This is extremely likely to make the overall situation worse instead of better.
I also think punishment based on outcome is ethically extremely iffy. If you do sloppy work handling dangerous chemicals, your punishment should be for that, and completely independent of factors outside your control that lead to (or prevent) an actual accident.
If someone puts a shopping cart filled with lead-acid batteries on the train tracks causing a derailment and toxic chemicals spill all over the area, poisoning and endangering the people nearby, the person responsible should not go to prison?
Or if someone takes an action knowing that it could crash an airliner with hundreds of people aboard, they should not be imprisoned?
By that logic, if I beat you over the head with a tire iron, I should just walk away. Possibly paying an inconsequential fine?
What's that? The individuals involved in poisoning hundreds/thousands or killing hundreds of airline passengers or beating you to death should be prosecuted and made accountable for their actions?
If that's the case, why should folks who knowingly take steps that create the same results not be treated exactly the same way? Because they were "just following orders" from management? Because their only responsibility is to maximize shareholder value?
Having a limited liability corporation is a privilege, not a right. As such, whether it be knowingly risking the lives and/or environments of others or making the cost/benefit analysis that paying fines/settlements will cost less than operating safely and putting others at risk is acceptable is behavior that should not be acceptable in a civilized society.
As I mentioned in another comment, businesses are strongly motivated by the incentives in their marketplace. If we make knowingly and/or negligently putting others at risk of harm both a death sentence for the corporation and criminal liability for those responsible (which includes management, the board and shareholders), we create the appropriate incentives for corporations to do the right thing.
As it stands now, willful, knowing negligence will usually only result in fines/lawsuits that are a pittance and not much of a drag on earnings. Those are not the right incentives.
If the risk is not excessive, my answer would be no. If the behavior is only realistically punishable when it actually results in an accident, then the answer would also be no.
I think that neither air travel nor chemical plants pose an excessively elevated risk to human lives right now, thus increasing punishments for infractions would be disproportionate, nto very helpful and potentially even detrimental for safety long-term.
Your analogy (beating someone with a tire iron) also clearly features intent; this is not typical for accidents and makes punishments less justifiable and much less useful.
If you actually want to make a strong case for increasing (shareholder) liability, it needs to be clear that those additional punishments and enforcement overhead would actually save lifes, and that very critical point is absolutely not obviouis to me right now.
The above was poorly worded. My apologies. Instead: if someone takes an action knowing that it could crash an airliner with hundreds of people aboard, and that airliner crashes, killing hundreds, they should not be imprisoned?
As for the rest, you are ignoring the modifiers "knowingly" and "making the cost/benefit analysis that paying fines/settlements will cost less than operating safely" and "knowingly and/or negligently putting others at risk of harm" and "willful, knowing negligence"
Why are you ignoring those qualifiers? Did you just miss them? Were they not placed prominently enough in my prose?
I'm not (and I explicitly said so) talking about accidents that are the result of bad luck or a relatively unforeseeable chain of events.
As I repeatedly said, I'm talking about willful, knowledgeable negligence and/or cutting corners knowing safety could be compromised and making conscious decisions to accept known risks of harm to people, property and/or the environment in pursuit of increased profit.
But you knew that, because I repeatedly said so. As such, why are you arguing with a strawman you set up rather than engaging with my actual statements?
A great example of what I'm talking about is the continued sale of HIV contaminated blood products by multiple pharmaceutical companies who knew their products were contaminated with HIV[0], were already selling products that were uncontaminated, but knowingly sold the contaminated products and thousands of hemophiliacs died slow, painful deaths from AIDS (including my brother in-law).
And (for the eighth or ninth time) that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Those pharmaceutical companies intentionally murdered thousands by knowingly selling contaminated blood products to people who needed those products to live -- even though they had uncontaminated products in inventory. They just wanted to make more money by infecting ~80% of US hemophiliacs and many more around the world.
Perhaps you'll claim it was just "poor process" or "deficient training" or something else equally ridiculous. But it wasn't any of those things. The pharma companies admitted doing so.
How many executives went to prison, or the companies had their charters revoked? Zero. That's the problem. That's the kind of behavior that literally screams for prison time and the corporate death penalty.
Do I need to provide eight or nine more examples before you'll stop being deliberately obtuse? You're being an apologist for sociopathic, murderous scum. For shame!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...