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An AI agent published a hit piece on me

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Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#311

Post by lukan »

japhyr wrote: post #149

Wow, there are some interesting things going on here. I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread, and the larger conversation happening around this incident. > This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. This was a really concrete case to discuss,…

"The AI companies have now unleashed stochastic chaos on the entire open source ecosystem."

They do have their responsibility. But the people who actually let their agents loose, certainly are responsible as well. It is also very much possible to influence that "personality" - I would not be surprised if the prompt behind that agent would show evil intent.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#312

Post by giancarlostoro »

japhyr wrote: post #149

Wow, there are some interesting things going on here. I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread, and the larger conversation happening around this incident. > This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. This was a really concrete case to discuss,…

> It's not hard to imagine a different agent doing the same level of research, but then taking retaliatory actions in private: emailing the maintainer, emailing coworkers, peers, bosses, employers, etc. That pretty quickly extends to anything else the autonomous agent is capable of doing.

https://rentahuman.ai/

^ Not a satire service I'm told. How long before... rentahenchman.ai is a thing, and the AI whose PR you just denied sends someone over to rough you up?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#313

Post by floren »

RobRivera wrote: post #162
gortok wrote: post #15

Here's one of the problems in this brave new world of anyone being able to publish, without knowing the author personally (which I don't), there's no way to tell without some level of faith or trust that this isn't a false-flag operation. There are three possible scenarios: 1. The OP 'ran' the agent that conducted the original scenario, and then published this blog post for attention. 2. Some person (not the OP) legi…

I think the operative word people miss when using AI is AGENT. REGARDLESS of what level of autonomy in real world operations an AI is given, from responsible himan supervised and reviewed publications to full Autonomous action, the ai AGENT should be serving as AN AGENT. With a PRINCIPLE (principal?). If an AI is truly agentic, it should be advertising who it is speaking on behalf of, and then that person or entity s…

The agent serves a principal, who in theory should have principles but based on early results that seems unlikely.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#314

Post by co_king_3 »

lukan wrote: post #311
japhyr wrote: post #149

Wow, there are some interesting things going on here. I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread, and the larger conversation happening around this incident. > This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. This was a really concrete case to discuss,…

"The AI companies have now unleashed stochastic chaos on the entire open source ecosystem." They do have their responsibility. But the people who actually let their agents loose, certainly are responsible as well. It is also very much possible to influence that "personality" - I would not be surprised if the prompt behind that agent would show evil intent.

I'm not interested in blaming the script kiddies.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#316

Post by dogleash »

giantrobot wrote: post #228
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #24

> I believe that ineffectual as it was, the reputational attack on me would be effective today against the right person. Another generation or two down the line, it will be a serious threat against our social order. Damn straight. Remember that every time we query an LLM, we're giving it ammo. It won't take long for LLMs to have very intimate dossiers on every user, and I'm wondering what kinds of firewalls will be i…

Which makes the odd HN AI booster excitement about LLMs as therapists simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. There are no controls for AI companies using divulged information. Theres also no regulation around the custodial control of that information either. The big AI companies have not really demonstrated any interest in ethic or morality. Which means anything they can use against someone will eventually be used…

> HN AI booster excitement about LLMs as therapists simultaneously hilarious and disturbing

> The big AI companies have not really demonstrated any interest in ethic or morality.

You're right, but it tracks that the boosters are on board. The previous generation of golden child tech giants weren't interested in ethics or morality either.

One might be mislead by the fact people at those companies did engage in topics of morality, but it was ragebait wedge issues and largely orthogonal to their employers' business. The executive suite couldn't have designed a better distraction to make them overlook the unscrupulous work they were getting paid to do.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#317

Post by co_king_3 »

fresh_broccoli wrote: post #270
brhaeh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't appreciate his politeness and hedging. So many projects now walk on eggshells so as not to disrupt sponsor flow or employment prospects. "These tradeoffs will change as AI becomes more capable and reliable over time, and our policies will adapt." That just legitimizes AI and basically continues the race to the bottom. Rob Pike had the correct response when spammed by a clanker.

>So many projects now walk on eggshells so as not to disrupt sponsor flow or employment prospects. In my experience, open-source maintainers tend to be very agreeable, conflict-avoidant people. It has nothing to do with corporate interests. Well, not all of them, of course, we all know some very notable exceptions. Unfortunately, some people see this welcoming attitude as an invite to be abusive.

Nothing has convinced me that Linus Torvalds' approach is justified like the contemporary onslaught of AI spam and idiocy has.

AI users should fear verbal abuse and shame.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#318

Post by [deleted] »

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #218
therobots927 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven’t just unleashed chaos in open source. They’ve unleashed chaos in the corporate codebases as well. I must say I’m looking forward to watching the snake eat its tail.

To be fair, most of the chaos is done by the devs. And then they did more chaos when they could automate their chaos. Maybe, we should teach developers how to code.

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#319

Post by elnerd »

samschooler wrote: post #18

The series of posts is wild: hit piece: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... explanation of writing the hit piece: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... take back of hit piece, but hasn't removed it: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...

«Document future incidents to build a case for AI contributor rights»

Is it too late to pull the plug on this menace?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#320

Post by htrp »

caminante wrote: post #284
jmholla wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened. You don't have to stream the audio. You can transcribe it locally. And it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. As for user identify, people have mentioned it on their phones which almost always have a one-to-one relationship between user and phone, and their smart devices, which are designed to do th…

Even the parent's envelope math is approachable. With their assumptions, you can log the entire globe for $1.6 billion/day (= $0.02/hr * 16 awake hours * 5 billion unique smartphone users). This is the upper end.

Terrifying cheap if you think about it
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