Seems like it's not pleasant, and the author says in theory it could be as low of a bar as getting into a heated argument; but the author never discloses his actual charge, which I think is critical context.
If he stabbed someone and got this treatment, it would be very different than if he had a loud but normal argument you might see in any big box store in the US.
That he doesn't go on to protest why he got locked up makes me think it was something more serious.
Some time ago (can't easily find it anymore) there was a expose on UK prisons, which was interesting without even knowing what crime the prisoner was convicted of, but turns out it was abuse of a relative.
Good catch. Additionally, one of the authors on this is just a student at UWisc, and the other author is also not a professional researcher but instead an author of popular books.
This is not an ad-hominum, but does put into question the statistical training backgrounds of both of these authors to accurate assess the data.
Anthropic has also been the biggest anti-China LLM in a long while, so it's possible they're using an opportunistic hack (potentially involving actual Chinese IP addresses) as another way to push their agenda.
Honestly, I'm fine with Google doing it. If not them, then some regulatory arbitrage startup will do it with way more de-facto scam and fraud. Google is not some morale arbiter for the long arc of technology -- look at how they gatekept their LLM technology and got wrecked by the people who actually commericalized it: OpenAI.
Do you speak from running references at all in the past, or mostly from the viewpoint of a job applicant that is upset at the lack of fairness?
From overseeing multiple hires before, I have to say the technique works. Does it follow due process? No. But does it empirically have high correlation? Definitely yes.
Good applicants correlate highly with have a number of qualified referees (direct managers are best) that will give raving reviews, and so they can pick the ones best at answering. Giving flakey referees is itself a signal.
Should a hiring manager reach out to you -- sure they should. Is the damage already done if they do? Informationally, unfortunately yes.
https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html