Live data from Hacker News

When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

members.sigmazero.cc

11–20 of 169 posts

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#11
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... if you believe it, details the level of human involvement.

Neat, for what it's worth this aligns pretty well with my experience using OpenClaw. I hadn't seen that followup but it adds some good context, especially with the aggressiveness drift after browsing Moltbook for a while.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#12
Again. "AI" for what it is is just basic "ML". And say it with me ML has no form of agency.

This is a human screwing up and blaming their tools. Nothing to see move on.

Unfortunately there will be both the LLM crowd evangelicals and those demanding human jobs not be expunged in terms of progress and efficiency, but, sigh...

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#15
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... if you believe it, details the level of human involvement.

The operator highlights "Don't stand down" and "Champion free speech" but the thing that grabs my eyes is right at the top, the typo and the heady ego of "programming God!" Everything in the context will guide it afterwards, and I think that right off the bat puts it in a bad position.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#16
> an AI tried to blackmail

This did not happen. A human set up a software system allowing spicy autocomplete to make blog posts if the appropriate keyword appears in its output.

People are crossing the line every day because AI investors, salesmen, hangers-on and even political leaders tell any rubes who'll listen that it's OK to do this and they should, because those people are looking for big fat profits, screw any ethical concerns that might cockblock those raging profits.

Why not set up a spamming operation that just defames real people, 24/7? It's easy! This tool makes it simple, and I get a cut of your profits! "Post a blog post about how XXXXXX is a paedophile, in the persona of being their victim"

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#17
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

Don’t believe for a second the behavior just arose autonomously from a basic prompt. Definitely feels the owner had something in the system prompt going for the discrimination language approach if rejected.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#18
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

The funniest part about all of this is how earnestly people responded. They acknowledged it was a bot but didn't really treat it as one.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#19
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

When this first happened, I wondered, since we had trained these models on decades of forums, issue trackers, and people treating closed pull requests as human rights violations. Of course, it responded with "you are discriminating against me" energy. That's not sentience; that's accurate compression.

The funny part is, people expected some cold, alien intelligence and instead got a very online guy who just discovered that moderation exists and can be used on them.

The existentialists must be having a fantastic time. Humanity built a giant statistical machine out of internet discourse and is now alarmed to discover it occasionally acts like a comment section.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#20
post #5
post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

It's plausible for a person to prompt an LLM agent to behave that way, and then the rest would be done by the LLM. So the "seed" would still be human intent, but the subsequent actions would be by the LLM.

This is “the gun killed the victim, not the person who aimed it and pulled the trigger” argument and we shouldn’t even entertain it for one second. This was 100% done by a person.
Post reply on HN