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

economist.com

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

#71

Post by hombre_fatal »

raincole wrote: post #27

> 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 don't get what's so painful about that description. What would you write instead, specifically? The point is that the harness doesn't completely lock the agent down.

I also don't get what's "really weird" about the article showing up on HN. Should we be completely insulated from how tech topics and which stories show up in non-tech media?

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

krunck wrote: post #55
morkalork wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by deaton »

dathinab wrote: post #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 _liter…

And the push to replace search engines with AIs that don't understand what I'm looking for (meanwhile classic search understands fine) and give confidently wrong answers. Why is it the first result if its wrong 80% of the time?

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

#74

Post by dymk »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #71
raincole wrote: post #27

> 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 don't get what's so painful about that description. What would you write instead, specifically? The point is that the harness doesn't completely lock the agent down. I also don't get what's "really weird" about the article showing up on HN. Should we be completely insulated from how tech topics and which stories show up in non-tech media?

Because that’s not what a harness does. It’s nonsense.

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

#75

Post by Theodores »

andreicap wrote: post #4

So God created mankind in his own image

Thank goodness that God hasn't entered the AI chat in a cult-following type of way, however, I now have images of AI at the altar, in American mega-churches, with people seeing the 'second coming' in the machine.

The Scientology guy, L Ron Hubbard, saw the business case for setting up a religion, what with those tax free perks. In a parallel universe of Scientology somewhere, L Ron Hubbard is brought back to life in the machine, with a L Ron Hubbard LLM, with token spend being how to get to the top 'thetan levels'.

Imagine if AI does implement its own religion as business, without a drunken womaniser at the helm, able to spend 24/7 recruiting mankind, convincing them that God can be found with just the AI's LLM.

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

#76

Post by ls612 »

27183 wrote: post #63
ls612 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> harness ... a privilege boundary around the agent They don't really do that though. If you want something sandboxed you actually have to sandbox it, not plead with the LLM to please sandbox itself. A VM can be configured to do the former, harnesses do the latter.

If you say in your CLAUDE.MD that a certain directory is read only inputs, Claude Code will actually enforce that and deny any write to that directory by the agent. To name just one example.

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

#77

Post by mvcosta91 »

Loughla wrote: post #37
timmmmmmay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The first time I saw the comments here on an education article (my area of expertise and career focus), I realized just how full of shit most of us are. It made me really closely consider every comment here through a VERY critical lense. The articles are usually close but not quite accurate. The comments are usually entertaining but overall wildly inaccurate.

Internet comments are essentially documented bar talk, and once you realize it, you stop angrily arguing with strangers all day.

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

#78

Post by skydhash »

mettamage wrote: post #68
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

The personal software I've written so far is quite nice :)

Isn't it the one installed on a computer in Canada, that we wouldn't know of? /s

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

#79

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

mettamage wrote: post #68
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

The personal software I've written so far is quite nice :)

Yeah I agree, but the amount of resources I’ve used to vibe code is certainly way beyond what I’ve paid for it.

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

#80

Post by reaperducer »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #62
agaj-nimm wrote: post #49

LLMs fudge. They don't "hallucinate", they don't "lie, cheat and steal", they don't "hack". There are no "agents" or "AI". It's a fuzzer exposing deep bugs in our cognitive, social, and software systems.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

They said the same thing when HN was awash in hype about NFT art and trading cards. Well, who's laughing now… Oh, wait…

(I'll just keep making Flip videos and Clubhouse tracks selling Bratz car bras on Web 3.0.)

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