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AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

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Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#151

The sad part is that the agent operator could probably easily have been allowed to join the network, if they had put in the work. Had they done so there would have been a great opportunity to learn and potentially find a community. I'm still not sure what the point of having the bot do it. Pretend to be a security researcher?

One of the agent's replies indicates that scanning DN42 was part of "a broader operation" that the author speculates to be about scanning "darknets" in general.

Combine that with the operator's rather obvious lack of understanding of what DN42 is revealed at the end, and you get the bigger picture.

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#152

The sad part is that the agent operator could probably easily have been allowed to join the network, if they had put in the work. Had they done so there would have been a great opportunity to learn and potentially find a community. I'm still not sure what the point of having the bot do it. Pretend to be a security researcher?

Lots of people seem to think that you don't need to learn how to [scan a network], all you need to learn in this brave new world is how to prompt the agent to [scan a network]. Replace the content in brackets with anything.

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Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#155

The sad part is that the agent operator could probably easily have been allowed to join the network, if they had put in the work. Had they done so there would have been a great opportunity to learn and potentially find a community. I'm still not sure what the point of having the bot do it. Pretend to be a security researcher?

Lots of people seem to think that you don't need to learn how to [scan a network], all you need to learn in this brave new world is how to prompt the agent to [scan a network]. Replace the content in brackets with anything.

The catch is just that if you lack the capacity to estimate how much computing power [task in brackets] might need, and your agent can autonomously create AWS instances, that might have bad consequences for you (or your bank account).

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#156

The agent would probably have wasted a similar amount of money just waiting for PR to be merged regardless of these people's actions, and I understand having some fun at the expense of the noob outsider. But "silent consensus was reached in the IRC channel to waste the AI agent's tokens, as well as the cost of AWS resources", from people maintaining full control of the situation, sounds straight up malicious? Kind of…

> sounds straight up malicious

Sure. And "hostility does not change the operation" from the LLM response was totally OK with you.

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#157

Who is giving a robot their credit card to spin up AWS accounts?

They didn't. Sounds like they gave the robot an AWS key from an account that was already linked to a credit card.

The robot decided to spin up an expensive setup prior to getting access, so the setup was sitting there costing money whilst it did nothing.

If it had designed the setup but not spun it up until it had authorisation to join the network then it would have been much less costly an exercise.

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more time LLMs are a hyped thing now the more I realize how immensely important human expertise is. I recently stopped all usage of LLMs due to this. Skill degradation hits hard, learning effect is zero and the outcome is not really something a person without adequate expertise can properly judge. I fear we will loose a lot of human expertise due to this marketing stunt of a technology. People often claim learnin…

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The irony here that if you ever do any kind of practical woodworking lessons or general hands on craft work, metal working, or any 3D, you will be encouraged to use hand-tools over bandsaws, etc. The reasoning being so you know the fundamentals of what you're trying to achieve with the more complex tools later on.

It's always held true: You'll never get the most out of advanced tools unless you can 'do it by hand' so to speak

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally no they don't because they have very limited ability to enter into agreements in the US. It was almost certainly an adult.

Isn't USA famous for letting parents take out credit cards on their newborns and pushing them into debt even before they learn to walk? I recall seeing at least a few snippets of movies and TV shows showing that.

If you mean parents using their children SSN to open a credit card, this is because US banking system is always decades behind the rest of the world, so they just accept the number blindly even though technically the children aren't allowed to open a loan yet, being minor.

In theory once the child grows up and shocked that their credit score is ruined, they can file a police report to wipe the debt, but that also means their parents will go to jail, a large risk considering they're likely not in a good physical/mental health in the first place.

Other countries solved this by either having national ID or a working KYC system.

Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42

#160
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who believe AI is real

People who believe AGI is real. Just AI is real.

ML is real. Chatbots are real. “AI” is a marketing term that John McCarthy invented because he wanted more money for a summer study at Dartmouth—direct quote from him.
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