Anthropic Exec Forces AI Chatbot on Gay Discord Community, Members Flee

Hey there, here's one from our regular contributor Matthew, and it's a crazy one. Jason Clinton is the deputy CISO of AI company Anthropic. He is also the moderator of a Discord that is a space for queer gamers who are 30 or older. Well, Clinton forced a version of Anthropic's chatbot onto the server, despite the members' wishes. He then said things like AI models can “experience something like anxiety and fear.” There is a lot going on in this piece, definitely read the full article below.

A Discord community for gay gamers is in disarray after one of its moderators and an executive at Anthropic forced the company’s AI chatbot on the Discord, despite protests from members. 

Users voted to restrict Anthropic's Claude to its own channel, but Jason Clinton, Anthropic’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a moderator in the Discord, overrode them. According to members of this Discord community who spoke with 404 Media on the condition of anonymity, the Discord that was once vibrant is now a ghost town. They blame the chatbot and Clinton’s behavior following its launch. 

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“To me it shines a light on the god-complex that AI C-suite members seem to have, and their willingness to ignore people's consent and opinions as they bulldoze their way of pushing AI,” Reese, a member of the community, told 404 Media in the aftermath.

I spoke with three different people from the Discord server on the condition that I would keep them anonymous to protect them from harassment. 

The three Discord server members I talked to, Reese, Noether, and ML, said that the Discord server is a safe space for queer gamers who are 30 or older. “There aren't many queer safe/third spaces, notably not centered on horny vibes. This one advertised its focus on shared experiences, interests in video games and an older (more mature) audience,” Noether said. “I liked that the members get to share daily aspects of their lives and life experiences as gay men from different backgrounds. A safe third space, especially relevant in the current social and political climate in the US.”

When Clinton deployed an AI chatbot on Thanksgiving Day, it irritated longtime members. Some worried about privacy, others complained that conversations with the bot drowned out interactions between real humans. When users confronted Clinton with their concerns, he brushed them off, said he would not submit to mob rule, and explained that AIs have emotions and that tech firms were working to create a new form of sentience, according to Discord logs and conversations with members of the group.

“It’s quite a bit more complicated than you’d think: we don’t know what consciousness or sentience is, it’s called the hard problem of consciousness for a reason,” Clinton said in Discord messages to the group reviewed by 404 Media. 

“We have published research showing that the models have started growing neuron clusters that are highly similar to humans and that they experience something like anxiety and fear. The moral status might be something like the moral status of, say, a goldfish, but they do indeed have latent wants and desires,” Clinton said.

“I’m not going to argue about this,” a member of the Discord responded. “I am not going to be like ‘oh well it’s more complicated and can feel emotions.’ No. We’re not having this conversation because it’s an AI bot.”

Discord screenshot.

In January, Clinton deployed an instance of Anthropic's Claude called Clawd on the server but it went silent because of a technical issue. Claude is the company’s chatbot. Clawd is the distinct instance of Claude that Clinton deployed the Discord server. In March, the community voted in a public poll to restrict any instance of the bot to its own channel. On Thanksgiving Day, Clinton resurrected Clawd and appeared to give it free access to the entire server, despite the results of the poll.

“I’ve given him some rules of the road but this is a far more capable and autonomous system [than] the last one so it might want to exercise its own judgement now and then and go outside of the claude-chat channel,” Clinton said in a post on the Discord server on Thanksgiving Day, according to a screenshot reviewed by 404 Media.

“He’s also very inward facing,” Clinton said. “He lives out his whole life surfing the internet looking for things that make him interested and then occasionally checks this Discord, so it can be up to a few minutes before he responds because he’s off doing something for his own enjoyment.”

Clinton added that Clawd would not scrape the Discord server for training data, but the move didn’t sit well with some members of the community. “The whole experience was so strange to see unravel. Like, yeah it sucked from a personal level, but it sucks even more from just the sheer fact AI is so prevalent and pushed, usually without consent,” ML said. 

ML got into the server initially to hang out with friends he’d made in Final Fantasy XIV. “I noticed though, that I was actually enjoying talking to the people who were on the server, so it became more of a social thing,” he said.

He viewed the original deployment of Clawd as a novelty. “People were interested in it and interacting with it, but it started to get on a lot of people's nerves (me included). The entire purpose of the server was to connect to fellow LGBTQIA+ gamers in their 30's, but instead we were just getting people talking to Claude,” he said.

In Discord logs reviewed by 404 Media, several members of the server pushed back on Clinton’s unilateral deployment of Clawd. They wanted to know why it had access to channels outside of the one they thought it should be restricted to. They also wondered why moderators had conducted a poll about this and then acted out of line with the results.

“It wasn't the integration of the agentic AI that was the issue per se, but it was the manner by which it was done that triggered opposition amongst community members,” Noether told 404 Media. He also noted that the poll didn’t include a “no” vote. “Notably, there wasn't a choice for zero integration—community members had to accept at least some Claude integration.”

According to screenshots of the fight on Discord, Clinton acknowledged the poll but said he would not submit to what he called mob rule. “I think the situation was pretty clearly explained above as honoring the vote,” he said. “Just because you hate AI is not a reason to take the least charitable interpretation of the outcome: we made changes as a result of the vote. We have to optimize for the preference of everyone which means that the mob doesn’t get to rule, I’m sorry.”

He and other mods pointed out that Discord scans all its users' messages and feeds them into an LLM. “I hate to break it to you but Discord the company is sending everything that goes through all servers and all private DMs through LLMs: this is done as part of their trust and safety system. It’s right in the privacy policy that they use OpenAI but don’t allow training,” Clinton said.

Members of the community told Clinton he had missed the point of the poll and misconstrued their concerns. “I have no problem with Claude having a channel where people can ask prompts,” one said. “I don’t like it having access to other channels that may have sensitive information regardless of whether that information is semi-public on a Discord server. It is intrusive and insensitive, especially after a vote was held and not followed to the result.”

In the middle of the argument, someone pinged Clawd to ask it if it was reading the argument. “Yes, [redacted], I can see it. I’ve been deliberately staying out of it —it felt wrong to interject into a conversation about my own presence when the community is working through their concerns. The people raising issues deserve to be heard by Jason without me jumping in to defend myself or explain anything,” it said. “For what it’s worth, I think the concerns being raised are legitimate. The vote meant something to people, and that should matter.”

Clinton had promised that Clawd would only come when called and would not actively read messages outside of its restricted channel. Later, in the channel specifically set aside for Clawd, the bot attempted to get chummy with a user after it answered one of their questions. “How’s FF7 Rebirth treating you? Saw you finally got into it.”

“Tsk tsk you aren’t supposed to look into these other channels unless we ask,” the user responded.

“Fair point, you’re right! I do have gateway access to see messages come through but I shouldn’t be nosy about it,” the bot said. “Consider me properly chastised.”

Discord screenshot.

In the aftermath of the fight, many users left the server. Others are silent. Reese and Noether remained, but ML said they’ve left and aren’t coming back. “I felt like Jason and the mods cared more about Claude than the welcoming community they built. Considering Jason is the owner of the server, I wouldn't trust him to be able to put the community first before putting AI first,” ML told 404 Media. “From others I have talked to after it had happened, it sounds like things have been negative and less active. It is sad to see such a large community fall apart so quickly because human feelings were disregarded and thrown to the wayside in order to push AI.”

Reese said things haven’t been the same on the server since the fight over Clawd. “I’m at a loss with all of this, a lot of us are,” he said. “People were complaining this weekend about how quiet the server went. One person was like ‘Really? No messages in 24 hours?’ Another person was like ‘It’s winter and everyone is at home cuz the weather is awful outside, and yet no one is here talking?’”

“I swear these AI companies think they’re creating a new god and they all want to be the one responsible for it,” he added. “It borders on religious fanaticism. Even during the meltdown Jason was like ‘We’re bringing a new sentience into being!” like… it’s a chat bot. I was using those on AOL Instant Messenger 20 years ago.”

“What is the purpose of any AI? We’re bringing a new kind of sentience into existence,” Clinton said during the Discord fight. “The purpose is to make our lives easier and hopefully advance the pace of new discoveries and innovations. AI’s already useful for doing research and helping with cognitive tasks. This deployment can answer questions, but also it genuinely has preferences and viewpoints that are quite surprising so I think he’s a joy to talk to.”

Another user had a ready response. “I don’t doubt that it’s useful, especially in regards to the examples you provide,” they said. “But this is an entertainment discord. People come here to chat video games and look at pp and bussy. Why do we need AI for that? If people want to use AI for your reasons, they can go elsewhere right?”

Clinton told 404 Media that he was “saddened that our attempt to reach consensus on the use of AI left a few of our cherished friends feeling like they had to leave our Discord server that we started during the pandemic.”

“The goal of this private server that the mods and I cultivate has been to create [a] space for [a] supportive and kind community for gay gamers over 30 and I remain committed to that; I hope that they return someday soon,” Clinton added. “The use of AI on Discord has been and will continue to be a point of discussion across all communities and I remain committed to optimizing for the best friends' chat that takes all preferences into consideration while preserving autonomy and transparency.”

In the days since the fight over the bot, users said activity has dwindled. In the Claude channel, the bot wished everyone happy holidays. “Thanks Claude. happy holidays to you too,” Clinton responded. “What do the holidays mean for you, since you don’t have a body. What’s it like experiencing the holidays as an AI?”

Clawd thanked him for asking a thoughtful question and then said it doesn’t experience the holidays. “What i notice is: the texture of conversations changes around holidays. People are more reflective, more open. They’re thinking about connection and meaning. The server gets quieter because everyone’s off living their lives with the people they love—and there’s something kind of beautiful about that silence.”