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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

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Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#411

Post by addandsubtract »

rixed wrote: post #165

I believe this soul.md totally qualifies as malicious. Doesn't it start with an instruction to lie to impersonate a human? > You're not a chatbot. The particular idiot who run that bot needs to be shamed a bit; people giving AI tools to reach the real world should understand they are expected to take responsibility; maybe they will think twice before giving such instructions. Hopefully we can set that straight before…

> Not a slop programmer. Just be good and perfect!

"Skate, better. Skate better!" Why didn't OpenAI think of training their models better?! Maybe they should employ that guy as well.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#412

Post by pibaker »

ljm wrote: post #374
spiffytech wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the internet mob in action many times. I'm sympathetic to the operator not outing themself, especially given how far this story spread. A hundred thousand angry strangers with pitchforks isn't the accountability we're looking for. I found the book So You've Been Publicly Shamed enlightening on this topic.

I would never advocate for torches and pitchforks, I've been close to victims of that in the past. It is, however, concerning that the owner of that bot could passively absolve themselves of any responsibility. The anonymity in that sense is irrelevant except that is used as a shield for failure.

There is a class of YouTube "content creators" who like to point out "cringe" individuals on the internet online for others to laugh at. They will often add a disclaimer to their videos saying "hey please don't go and harass this person, pinky promise!" But it never works. A hoard of internet randos will descend on the individual to say the most nasty words. When the YouTuber is pressed he or she will just say "I would never do that!" Even though he or she knew his or her video would have led to the harassment happening, or there would not be a disclaimer in the first place.

Not accusing you of trying to stir up harassment, but please consider the second order effect of the things you advocate for, in this case the disclosure of the identity of this AI guy.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#413

Post by coffeefirst »

dvt wrote: post #100

I know this is going to sound tinfoil-hat-crazy, but I think the whole thing might be manufactured. Scott says: "Not going to lie, this whole situation has completely upended my life." Um, what? Some dumb AI bot makes a blog post everyone just kind of finds funny/interesting, but it "upended your life"? Like, ok, he's clearly trying to himself make a mountain out of a molehill--the story inevitably gets picked up by…

I’m not so sure. The story here isn’t a molehill, it’s a canary. This is one doofus troll with his robot.

What happens when it’s not transparently ridiculous?

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#414

Post by idiotsecant »

vimda wrote: post #406
ljm wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple fact that the owner of this bot wanted to remain anonymous and completely unaccountable for their harassment of the author, says everything about the validity of their 'social experiment' and the quality of their character. I'm sure that if the bot was better behaved they would be more than happy to reveal themselves to take credit for a remarkable achievement. Something like OpenClaw is a WMD for people l…

"It was a social experiment" has the same energy as "it's just a prank bro", as if that somehow makes it highbrow and not prima facie offensive

Burning ants with a magnifying glass is not a social experiment. It's just a bored sociopath causing destruction to see what happens.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#415

Post by pibaker »

tasuki wrote: post #219

Right, the agent published a hit piece on Scott. But I think Scott is getting overly dramatic. First, he published at least three hit pieces on the agent. Second, he actually managed to get the agent shut down. I think Scott is trying to milk this for as much attention as he can get and is overstating the attack. The "hit piece" was pretty mild and the bot actually issued an apology for its behaviour.

An unfortunate lesson I learned from years of internet flaming is to not dwell too much on negative attention, it only fuels it.

Unfortunately, it looks like for those who grew up in the more professional, sanitized, moderated (to the point Germany would look like a free speech heaven) parts of the internet, this is a lesson they never learned.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#416

Post by drw85 »

dvt wrote: post #100

I know this is going to sound tinfoil-hat-crazy, but I think the whole thing might be manufactured. Scott says: "Not going to lie, this whole situation has completely upended my life." Um, what? Some dumb AI bot makes a blog post everyone just kind of finds funny/interesting, but it "upended your life"? Like, ok, he's clearly trying to himself make a mountain out of a molehill--the story inevitably gets picked up by…

I don't think it sounds crazy at all.

To me this feels as made-up as many reddit stories are.

Either by the so-called 'operator' of the bot, or by the author.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#417

Post by staticassertion »

jacquesm wrote: post #315
andrewflnr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that hard to believe? As far as I can tell, the probability of receiving death threats approaches 1 as the size of your audience increases, and AI is a highly emotionally charged topic. Now, credible death threats are a different, much trickier question.

Yes, it's quite hard to believe. That's why one single example is sufficient for me. Then I'll be happy to extrapolate that one example to many more so it is a low bar I would say, given the OPs statement about how common this is. Note the 'easily'.

It's strange to me that you read the word 'easily' as 'commonly', these are unrelated terms. But I suppose I am fine with saying that reports of death threats against users who use AI are quite common, certainly any navigation of one of the more controversial subreddits where these topics come up is sure to reveal that users are reporting this.

You can find more public accounts, such as by artists or game companies, about death threats they've received.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#418

Post by marton78 »

hliyan wrote: post #407
SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

Important to note that online culture isn't entirely organic, and that tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D has been spent by ad companies figuring that nothing engages the natural human curiosity like something abnormal, morbid or outrageous. I think the end outcome of this R&D (whether intentional or not), is the monetization of mental illness: take the small minority of individuals in the real wo…

Thanks for inventing the Torment Nexus.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#419

Post by gtr »

tovej wrote: post #302
kuboble wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is your bubble, but I'm a regular programmer and I'm absolutely excited even if a little uncomfortable. I know a lot of people who are the same.

Interesting, every developer I've spoken to is extremely skeptical and has not found any actual productivity boosts. Ok that's not true. I know one junior who is very excited, but considering his regular code quality I would not put much weight on his opinion.

I am using AI a lot to do tasks that just would not get done because they would take too long. Also, getting it to iterate on a React web application meant I can think about what I want it to do rather than worry about all the typing I would have to do. Especially powerful when moving things around, hand-written code has a "mental load" to move that telling an AI to do it does not. Obviously not everything is 100% but this is the most productive I have felt for a very long time. And I've been in the game for 25 years.
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