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AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#41

Post by elmer2 »

scrollaway wrote: post #39
mitxela wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in. Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark. If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone,…

It was around in 2008. Reddit was flooded with bots shilling for Obama.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#42

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

scrollaway wrote: post #39
mitxela wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in. Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark. If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone,…

> If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale.

I'll never forget how insane HN went in 2016, felt like basically the whole English language internet went insane. And it's been a decade since then (wow).

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#43

Post by nonsensical_ »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #42
scrollaway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark. If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone,…

> If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. I'll never forget how insane HN went in 2016, felt like basically the whole English language internet went insane. And it's been a decade since then (wow).

Even back then it seemed like a tempest in a teapot situation on HN. People thought they were raw and edgy saying “fuck Trump” like it amounts to anything. I remember at least one, maybe two YC-backed companies dedicated to removing Trump. That’s right - a startup business plan that amounts to impeaching a president. Now there’s a billion+ dollar enterprise.

All this, and here we are in 2026. It just shows immaturity and naïveté.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#44

Post by theoreticalmal »

meander_water wrote: post #6
plaidfuji wrote: post #4

> Here’s the thing: most of our habits at work still assume that producing something means you have to understand it. This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level. You trust that those layers work. At some point in the past you couldn’t just trust that. At some po…

You trust machine code because it was produced by a deterministic system that was written and tested thoroughly by other engineers. AI systems are not the same. You can't guarantee deterministic output. Also, code is still the best language we have to convey our intentions as engineers into function. Natural language is too imprecise and ambiguous. Understanding the code allows us to understand the intention behind t…

What about a team of human coders is more deterministic than an AI coder?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#45

Post by mitxela »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #37
mitxela wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of low-trust societies. They have things like armed security guards and barbed wire fences outside every apartment complex. Cough southafrica

> There are plenty of low-trust societies And high trust societies have spent the past two decades importing tons of H1B style workers from many of the lower trust countries

Which ones are those? Sweden?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#46

Post by mitxela »

scrollaway wrote: post #39
mitxela wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in. Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark. If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone,…

The 2016 election, you may remember, came after and was partially caused by Gamergate.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#47

Post by mock-possum »

mitxela wrote: post #24
Grimblewald wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of ex-civs had techdoomers who were right. When tevh doomers have no salient points to make, its fair to not listen, but this time around i think something is different to historic doomerism. Trust is a fundamental thing, and i cannot fathom how a post-trust society could possibly host life as we know it. Life ad we know it comes from systemic efficiencies that are rooted in trust, requiring it deeply. no trus…

There are plenty of low-trust societies. They have things like armed security guards and barbed wire fences outside every apartment complex. Cough southafrica

Isn’t “low trust society” just the latest racist dog whistle though? When you say ‘low-trust society’ don’t you just mean the third world, populated by brown people? Or are there examples of first world white low trust societies?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#48

Post by bluefirebrand »

mitxela wrote: post #45
bluefirebrand wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of low-trust societies And high trust societies have spent the past two decades importing tons of H1B style workers from many of the lower trust countries

Which ones are those? Sweden?

Be snotty about it if you want but I didn't invent the term "low trust society", it's a pretty accepted term in social psychology from what I can tell

And based on that, countries like India, Pakistan, Phillipines, Nigeria, Syria all quality as "low to very low trust", and they also represent some of the highest numbers of immigration to many countries right now. A full 30% of immigrants to Canada over the past 5 years are from India, for example.

I don't think it is that unreasonable of me to suggest that people from low trust societies bring low trust behavior with them.

Which does not imply they are untrustworthy people by the way. It does imply a different set of expectations and public behaviors though, which often chafe with their new country

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#49

Post by [deleted] »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #48
mitxela wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones are those? Sweden?

Be snotty about it if you want but I didn't invent the term "low trust society", it's a pretty accepted term in social psychology from what I can tell And based on that, countries like India, Pakistan, Phillipines, Nigeria, Syria all quality as "low to very low trust", and they also represent some of the highest numbers of immigration to many countries right now. A full 30% of immigrants to Canada over the past 5 yea…

[deleted]

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#50

Post by atomicnumber3 »

scrollaway wrote: post #40
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense yes. I trust that my coworkers will be accountable for their outcomes and accomplish them with the high quality bar I know they intrinsically hold themselves to. And that they understand our shared goals and if they don't, they will work to become aligned. And if I can't say that for a coworker, well, that's performance feedback.

Your coworkers are if anything less reliably deterministic than an AI. And the human version of a prompt injection is called social engineering and it’s far more of an issue than actual prompt injection and has been for an extremely long time.

I don't know what to say except that this has not been the case for me. Claude is a different person for every single prompt and has absolutely no core sense of what our goals are, or even who the "our" is that's having goals.

While my coworkers are very stable personalities of a consistent work drive, sense of pragmatism, things that they find more and less interesting, career aspirations, etc. they're not all the exact same, and I depend on that as I fit tasks and ownership to people.

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