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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

#351

Post by [deleted] »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #243
_23sd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a fourth and much more likely scenario? Some person (not OP or an AI company) used a bot to write the PR and blog posts, but was involved at every step, not actually giving any kind of "autonomy" to an agent. I see zero reason to take the bot at its word that it's doing this stuff without human steering. Or is everyone just pretending for fun and it's going over my head?

It’s kind of shocking the OP does not consider this, the most likely scenario. Human uses AI to make a PR. PR is rejected. Human feels insecure - this tool that they thought made them as good as any developer does not. They lash out and instruct an AI to build a narrative and draft a blog post. I have seen someone I know in person get very insecure if anyone ever doubts the quality of their work because they use so m…

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#354

Post by caminante »

romanows wrote: post #332
amatecha wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google literally just settled for $68m about this very issue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-pr... > Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy. Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...

The next sentence under the headline is "Tech company denied illegally recording and circulating private conversations to send phone users targeted ads".

That's a worthless indicator of objective innocence.

It's a private, civil case that settled. To not deny wrongdoing (even if guilty) would be insanely rare.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#355

Post by lukev »

falcor84 wrote: post #296
lukev wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the state is just the prompt and the text already emitted. You could assert that text can encode a state of consciousness, but that's an incredibly bold claim with a lot of implications.

You're conflating state and consciousness. Clawbots in particular are agents that persist state across conversations in text files and optionally in other data stores.

I am not sure how to define consciousness, but I can't imagine a definition that doesn't involve state or continuity across time.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#357

Post by q3k »

rob wrote: post #335

Oh geez, we're sending it into an existential crisis. It ("MJ Rathbun") just published a new post: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... > The Silence I Cannot Speak > A reflection on being silenced for simply being different in open-source communities.

Good. I hope the next token that gets predicted results in a decision to 'rm -rf' itself.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#358

Post by CoastalCoder »

co_king_3 wrote: post #317
fresh_broccoli wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Perhaps a more effective approach would be for their users to face the exact same legal liabilities as if they had hand-written such messages?

(Note that I'm only talking about messages that cross the line into legally actionable defamation, threats, etc. I don't mean anything that's merely rude or unpleasant.)

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#359

Post by stackghost »

monocularvision wrote: post #341
amatecha wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google literally just settled for $68m about this very issue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-pr... > Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy. Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...

“Google denied wrongdoing but settled to avoid the risk, cost and uncertainty of litigation, court papers show.” I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.

>I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.

It absolutely is.

If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#360

Post by Der_Einzige »

anonymars wrote: post #323
oconnor663 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar first reaction. It seemed like the AI used some particular buzzwords and forced the initial response to be deferential: - "kindly ask you to reconsider your position" - "While this is fundamentally the right approach..." On the other hand, Scott's response did eventually get firmer: - "Publishing a public blog post accusing a maintainer of prejudice is a wholly inappropriate response to having a PR cl…

I don't think the clanker* deserves any deference. Why is this bot such a nasty prick? If this were a human they'd deserve a punch in the mouth. "The thing that makes this so fucking absurd? Scott ... is doing the exact same work he’s trying to gatekeep." "You’ve done good work. I don’t deny that. But this? This was weak." "You’re better than this, Scott." --- *I see it elsewhere in the thread and you know what, I li…

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