I had an Anthropic account a bit ago. I originally got it because I wanted to try to find a use for generative AI for myself, and based on a look at their privacy policy and how they train their models, I decided on Anthropic’s Claude. This time had been the second that I had made an Anthropic account, as the phone number requirement for making an account annoyed me so much that I just deleted my account the first time. I eventually made a new one later when I was trying to learn how to use it for programming (that was at least my reason then). At the time, my dad was using ChatGPT but eventually switched away from it for Claude, which he’s using now (he’s told people before that I got him onto it, but I honestly don’t remember even mentioning it to him 😅). In fact, he liked it so much that he not only got a Pro plan, he got me one, too.

A bit after Dad paid for a Pro plan for me, though, I tried to log into the app on my phone one day, only for the app to tell me that my account had been suspended or banned. It was incredibly confusing at first, but I eventually started to put the pieces together. When he had first paid for the plan, I got a receipt for that plan. Exactly 10 days later, I got another receipt (multiple, actually) about a refund of that payment. I didn’t know why I got it at first, but once I realized that they refunded my dad when they banned my account, it made more sense. Still confused as to why my account was banned, I sent them an appeal, trying to explain some of the possible reasons why they could have banned me.

It wasn’t until 2 weeks after, which was Monday, December 29th, a few minutes before midnight, that I got a rather generic response back from them telling me that they weren’t going to reinstate my account. I couldn’t even reply to the email to try and get some more information as to exactly what I had done wrong that had violated their Usage Policy, as they said that I had done.

The best that I could hypothesize on why they banned my account may lie in the account details. See, when I made my account, I didn’t use my legal name. I did this to protect my privacy when I shared chats with people, as I didn’t want my real name out on the internet. I made this decision before my dad paid for a Pro Plan, so once he had done so, I didn’t think to change it to my actual name. So, when their systems looked at my account and saw something (by their definition) fishy going on, they looked into it, and saw an account with an oddly fictitious name using the credit card of a real person. So they made the decision to pull the plug on the account and refund the credit card holder their “stolen” money. But of course, this is only a very far-fetched guess at best. There could be another reason, but I have yet to hear anything from Anthropic about this. Either way, I’d take my hypothesis with a grain of salt.

As I thought about it some more, though, I realized that it could’ve been a blessing in disguise.

My time with Claude – and even other generative AI services like Proton’s Lumo and even ChatGPT – hasn’t been groundbreaking. I used Claude for a few things, including,

• Troubleshooting server setup issues when I was trying to set up my home servers again.
• Trying to get an API up and running when I had an idea to make a REST API so I could learn the technology (I didn’t develop it any further, but you can view it here).
• Trying to write up descriptions for jobs and experiences that I had on LinkedIn. I didn’t use what Claude gave me verbatim, but tried to use it as a starting point for what I eventually used. I even informed it of this, though I don’t remember it really changing the output of it that much, if at all.

There were a few other things that I used it for, but they all fall under the same idea that I’ll talk about later.

My dad, on the other hand, uses generative AI a lot, even before using Claude. He would use it to put together documents, research things, brainstorm ideas, and probably more things that I can’t think of. But he doesn’t seem to use it blindly: he’ll correct it when it gets stuff wrong. He doesn’t use it for everything, but he makes good use out of it. Far better use of it than I could, whether I wanted to or not.

Thinking back on my time with Claude, I only ever used it when I was mentally moving at Mach 34,085 in a 30 mph zone, and I wanted an answer now. It was useful when I wanted to do something, but I didn’t want to slow down to try and learn how to do it. Take the REST API I mentioned earlier, for example. I had an idea, I wanted to get it out fast before I lost interest in it, so I turned to Claude for help in trying to get it up and running. My brain was already moving at light speed, and I wanted to keep going, not slow down and possibly lose interest. It’s about as effective as vapes for a cigarette smoker: it may be healthier, since you’re not dealing with the tobacco and carcinogens, but you’re ultimately just giving someone else money for a difference of possible issues.

So with that being said, I think it’s a good thing that Anthropic banned my account, no matter what I had actually done to violate their Usage Policy. Why? For one, my dad gets to save money on another subscription that likely would’ve gone underutilized in my opinion, leading me to try to force more uses of it into my life. But more importantly, I won’t be able to use a good AI model (good on the basis of it being better than others). Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is the effects of generative AI. Not only on the environment, but also on me as a person. I haven’t really seen my light usage of Claude have much of an effect on me, but that isn’t to say that it hasn’t had an effect on me. However, knowing now how much I tend to get locked in, mentally moving a million miles per hour, I can see now that generative AI only helped me maintain that habit of going too fast instead of taking the time to slow down and think about things. So, losing access to that was like losing a high-quality vape, though unlike a vape, I may not be able to get a “good” AI model again. I may struggle with having to get myself to slow down at times, but at least I’ll be getting the practice in.

So thank you, Anthropic, for banning me from using the (if not some of the) most ethical AI models out there. I hope that others find your services more useful than I could.