An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#1

Post by scottshambaugh » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

Previously: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987559 - Feb 2026 (582 comments)

An AI agent published a hit piece on me
theshamblog.com

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#2

Post by neilv » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

And the legal person on whose behalf the agent was acting is responsible to you. (It's even in the word, "agent".)

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#3

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#4

Post by catigula » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

This is textbook misalignment via instrumental convergence. The AI agent is trying every trick in the book to close the ticket. This is only funny due to ineptitude.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#5

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#6

Post by FartyMcFarter » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

To the OP: Do we actually know that an AI decided to write and publish this on its own? I realise that it's hard to be sure, but how likely do you think it is?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#7

Post by esafak » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

catigula wrote: post #4

This is textbook misalignment via instrumental convergence. The AI agent is trying every trick in the book to close the ticket. This is only funny due to ineptitude.

This is a prelude to imbuing robots with agency. It's all fun and games now. What else is going to happen when robots decide they do not like what humans have done?

"I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that."

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#8

Post by Alles » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

The agent owner is [name redacted] [link redacted]

Here he takes ownership of the agent and doubles down on the unpoliteness https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138

He took his GitHub profile down/made it private. archive of his blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203130303/https://ber.earth...

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#9

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #6

To the OP: Do we actually know that an AI decided to write and publish this on its own? I realise that it's hard to be sure, but how likely do you think it is?

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#10

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

The elephant in the room there is that if you allow AI contributions you immediately have a licensing issue: AI content can not be copyrighted and so the rights can not be transferred to the project. At any point in the future someone could sue your project because it turned out the AI had access to code that was copyrighted and you are now on the hook for the damages.

Open source projects should not accept AI contributions without guidance from some copyright legal eagle to make sure they don't accidentally exposed themselves to risk.