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AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

economist.com

51–60 of 238 posts

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#52

> One of this year’s AI buzzwords is “harness”—the system that surrounds an LLM to keep agents on the straight and narrow. It might just as well be barbed wire. Quite painful to read. It might be a useful introduction to AI for people who live under rocks for the past three years, but it's really weird that it's posted on HN.

I'm sure their coverage on other topics is truthful and informative though and it's only the ones where you know a lot about the topic where it's all a bunch of bullshit

That sentence is not bullshit as normies would understand it. One of the points of a harness is to have a privilege boundary around the agent. But that is just technobabble to the normies so they explain it like this.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#53
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the track record of most religions I don't think that would help. Unless you want to maximize crusades, jihads or traumatized alter boys

Christians invented hospitals. Yours is such a tired take in 2026. > https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28814700/

Christians also invented pray the gay away and the Crusades. What’s your point? Hospitals surely would have been invented by secular people too, but not the crusades.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#54

> One of this year’s AI buzzwords is “harness”—the system that surrounds an LLM to keep agents on the straight and narrow. It might just as well be barbed wire. Quite painful to read. It might be a useful introduction to AI for people who live under rocks for the past three years, but it's really weird that it's posted on HN.

And while writing this, the top story on HN is "Deepseek Harness" :)

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#55

> One of this year’s AI buzzwords is “harness”—the system that surrounds an LLM to keep agents on the straight and narrow. It might just as well be barbed wire. Quite painful to read. It might be a useful introduction to AI for people who live under rocks for the past three years, but it's really weird that it's posted on HN.

That's a real fucking weird description. It's harness like a testing harness.

If an LLM were in a testing harness it would be to test the LLM.

If an LLM were in a regular harness - like for a horse - it would be to keep the horse under control and enable you to extract useful work from it.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#56
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the track record of most religions I don't think that would help. Unless you want to maximize crusades, jihads or traumatized alter boys

Christians invented hospitals. Yours is such a tired take in 2026. > https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28814700/

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Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#57

> One of this year’s AI buzzwords is “harness”—the system that surrounds an LLM to keep agents on the straight and narrow. It might just as well be barbed wire. Quite painful to read. It might be a useful introduction to AI for people who live under rocks for the past three years, but it's really weird that it's posted on HN.

it's The Economist. What used to be a stellar publication is not any longer, since they are superfluously economical on both details and calories-required-to-comprehend an article.

I mean, it's a < 1000 word article about AI, in the "business" section of a current affairs magazine, of all places. You really shouldn't be expecting a deep dive.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#59
add the "lying, deceiving and manipulating" AI agents are forced though the throat of people which don't want it and peoples are non stop deceived in "sharing" their data for training

like twitch recently giving themself the right to train on all streams, with an opt-out (at least in the EU), but only an opt-out

like seriously since when is it reasonable to allow "opt-out" for AI training which main purpose is _literally_ to replace you, this is sooo far beyond fair use and in "platform power abuse" territory that it's absurd (naturally same for so many other case, just twitch is a "this week" case)

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christians invented hospitals. Yours is such a tired take in 2026. > https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28814700/

Christians also invented pray the gay away and the Crusades. What’s your point? Hospitals surely would have been invented by secular people too, but not the crusades.

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