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I Received an AI Email

timharek.no

341–350 of 597 posts

Re: I Received an AI Email

#341
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting peed at a couple times a day isn't a problem if the pee-ees miss 99% od the time, right? Small acts of malice are still acts of malice. Not everyone wants to live in a caveat emptor , dog-eats-dog society.

Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today. This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters, despite them finding jobs for many people that they otherwise would never have known about.

> Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today.

That's exactly the reason why we hate them.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#342

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

> > Incredibly, not a single recipient seemed to detect that the emails were AI-generated. Of the people who replied. I bet plenty figured it out, but didn't bother to reply.

Expect to see someone else write a blog post on How I Used AI to fool an AI Spammer

...of course they'd probably get an LLM to write the article too.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#343

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

This process should not require a human in the loop. Consider: * spammers have access to large amounts of compute via their botnets * the effectiveness of any particular spam message can easily be measured - it is simply the quantity of funds arriving at the cryptocurrency wallet tied to that message within some time window So, just complete the cycle: LLM to generate prompts, another to generate messages, send out a…

At least one sci-fi novel iirc had an AI spam filter achieve sentience, because the task basically amounted to contrastive-learning a model of humanity.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#344
post #283

I received a nice email the other day after one of my blog posts got posted on HN. It said: Hi - Just a note to say I'm a big fan of your writing. I always learn something and love your voice, which is hilarious and singular. Write a book! Best, {Name} {Link to sender's startup} {Link to sender's substack} New to writing online, it made me feel really good that someone enjoyed what I wrote and took the time to write…

I can't imagine leading a life this paranoid. There is practically no reason to suspect that email was generated by an LLM. This is like HN users who imply that some user comments are LLM generated...

Re: I Received an AI Email

#345

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

Things I wish become taboo: Admitting to use AI content.

Everyone is so comfortable doing shit like this.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#346
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People cry about Bitcoin's energy usage now, imagine the amount of energy burned to create next-level spam with "AI". Flame me all you want, but this is one case where Bitcoin is much more useful than LLM. If it doesn't create value, as its naysayers claim, at least it allows exchanging value. LLMs on the other hand, burn electricity to actively destroy the Internet's value, for the profit of inept and greedy drones.

Bitcoin is literally turning greed into money, by means of wasting exponentially increasing amounts of electricity. It doesn't just not create value - to be able to allow exchanging value, it fundamentally requires ever increasing waste, as the waste is what gives its mathematical guarantees. LLMs deliver value. Right here today, to countless people across countless jobs. Sure, some of that is marketing, but that's n…

I'd disagree to a large extent, because the specific similarities are important:

* the VCs are often literally the same guys pivoting

* the promoters are often literally the same guys pivoting

* AI's excuses for the ghastly electricity consumption are often literally bitcoin excuses

I think that's an excellent start on the comparison being valid.

Like, I've covered crypto skeptically for years and I was struck by just how similar the things to be said about the AI grifters were, and my readers have concurred.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#347

The future - megawatts of electricity being used, 24/7 as armies of LLMs email and debate each other, and try to sell each other programs at a great discount. As for the humans, we went fishing instead.

Slightly similar, in Lem's novel all war efforts moved to the moon where AI deployed by each nation continues in an endless conflict. Peace on Earth is achieved, peace in the mail box is achieved. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)

Re: I Received an AI Email

#348

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

This is sort of why I feel somewhat pessimistic about AI - the inevitable most profitable usecases being so bad in aggregate for a society with almost no bounds or values other than profit. It will never be easier to waste peoples attention.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#349

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

Things I wish become taboo: Admitting to use AI content. Everyone is so comfortable doing shit like this.

I much prefer admission to hiding it. It lets you easily see who doesn’t deserve your time

Re: I Received an AI Email

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI solves gigantic issues and helps us with cancer, protein folding, potentially math and other studies, material science etc. Bitcoin consumes as much energy as a country and has basically done nothing besides moving money from one group of people to a random other group of people. And bitcoin is also motivated to find the cheapest energy independent of any ethical reasoning (taking energy from cheap chinese hydro a…

Which gigantic issues has it solved? Curious to know.

I actually listed them up directly after.

For example alphafold: Protein folding. It is also now used in fusion reactor plasma control

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