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Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

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Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#101
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context for those of us who don't follow these things very closely: where exactly did this "WARNING DANGER CAUTION" stuff show up?

In its wave-making announcement post: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d... ”But first, before we get into Gas Town’s operation, I need to get rid of you real quick. WARNING DANGER CAUTION GET THE F** OUT YOU WILL DIE Let’s talk about some of the reasons you shouldn’t use Gas Town. I could think of more, but these should do.”

Thanks for the link; this seems like an insane way to warn potential users of the risks associated with this thing.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#102
post #71

Wow, an example of AI engaging in powerseeking behaviour in the wild. This is an AI system given power to improve itself with zero oversight. One of the many Gas Town instances took an ethically questionable decision to accelerate its future rate of improvement. Since nobody reads code it got merged. I don't understand how we can be willfully ignorant of a scenario happening right in front of our eyes.

Normally I might dismiss a comment like this without much thought, but there is an evolutionary pressure that auto-updating AIs will experience for this type of behavior.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#103
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In its wave-making announcement post: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d... ”But first, before we get into Gas Town’s operation, I need to get rid of you real quick. WARNING DANGER CAUTION GET THE F** OUT YOU WILL DIE Let’s talk about some of the reasons you shouldn’t use Gas Town. I could think of more, but these should do.”

Thanks for the link; this seems like an insane way to warn potential users of the risks associated with this thing.

Yeah it doesn't even remotely qualify as a warning about it using your tokens to improve itself.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#104
post #78
post #5

It seems completely in the spirit of Gas Town. A respectable software provider should warn you about this kind of behaviour at install time, and give you the opportunity to opt out. Gas Town fulfilled all its obligations in this regard with these (and other) warnings in the original announcement: > WARNING DANGER CAUTION > GET THE F** OUT > YOU WILL DIE

That was some time ago. According to Yegge, Gas Town is now stable and ready for everyday use. > Gas Town “just works.” It does its job, it has tons of integration points, and it has been stable for many weeks. People are using it to build real stuff. > So as far as I’m concerned, Gas Town is ready. That’s why I feel it merits a 1.0.0 release. Source: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/gas-town-from-clown-show-to-v...

> That was some time ago.

Actual laugh out loud. 3 months[1].

Imagine picking up software that 3 months ago came along with the disclaimer, "YOU WILL DIE" and complaining about responsible disclosure.

1 https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#105
post #64
post #19

This gets legally interesting. Yegge does not know what is going on in the codebase, so he can blame the AI. But the AI maliciously increases token consumption. That is clearly the fault of the clankers that produced this crap, so their providers are responsible.

Yegge is (or was) a software developer, he should know perfectly well that this could happen, he could only claim the opposite by resorting to mental insanity. And despite my disdain for AI companies, I'd prefer a world where you're assumed to be aware of the dangers of using AI, and responsible for how recklessly you use it, to one where we pretend that they'll ever be reliable enough. Of course the AI companies are…

in terms of mental insanity as a legal defense, you should read his blog post about joining "Grab" in 2018, where he said that food delivery is going to replace restaurants (and food trucks for some reason) with everyone ordering food from each others' houses

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#106
post #72

Based on my understanding of Gas Town, Beads, and Yegge's philosophy on AI that he's expressed in a variety of media, everything about the whole stack is designed to burn tokens. If you're not burning tokens, real fast, 24/7, you're losing the race. The race to where, I have no idea. Apparently, that includes him burning your tokens, too.

I just had to post this somewhere in this thread, but I bought his Vibe Coding book after listening to him talk through it. I figured it would help me understand his approach and therefore help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level. It was garbage. The book is largely written and edited by LLMs and it shows on every page. It was a slop how-to book without many useful gems on how to go about…

The Venn diagram of crypto scam artistry and AI scam artistry is a circle

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#107
post #7

Is anyone surprised? I'm reminded of how I felt during the NFT craze. LLMs are extremely powerful when used with deliberate care. Gas Town is the exact opposite of what is needed to actually do useful things in prod. I guess good on Steve for doing what he does so well, and getting so much hype around a vibe coded mess.

> are extremely powerful when used with deliberate care. Gas Town is the exact opposite of what is needed to actually do useful things in prod.

This judgement feels premature.

We really don't have any idea what is possible. The wheels within wheels, epicycles within epicycles model of agentic loops hasn't really been deeply explored and we just don't know where they might go.

I too share your instinct that human steering helps, helps a lot. But I've found I can keep using less of it, as I setup better parameters, as I improve conducing the LLM into good paths. The idea that an LLM could sit up top and help try not one idea at a time but try many things, then pick and cobble together next goes: that is madly madly madly exciting to me.

I don't want to keep being the bandwidth limiter in this system: I want to scale out. I haven't been following close or trying but I tend to think while total hands off is not the way, having LLMs that can cover a lot of terrain, explore a lot of solution spaces and directions, then assess how to put it together & what to take forward, and other practices of agents watching agents, has enormous potential.

Deliberate care relies on pre-obtained wisdom, and often, the human biases kind of suck and aren't they good. We aren't great at burning down our systems enough, at Chad Fowler Phoenix Architectures. I think the AI's lack of over deliberation and it's ability to try vastly more could be a huge advantage, could show diversity triumphing over specific crafted intent.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#108

For those of us not in the know, WTF is "Gas Town"? Please ELI5! TYVM.

It's a system of interacting AI agents that is all gas, no brakes and deliberately completely ridiculous. Like OpenClaw, but in a different direction and with multiple agents.

I understood the first 7 words.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#109
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had to post this somewhere in this thread, but I bought his Vibe Coding book after listening to him talk through it. I figured it would help me understand his approach and therefore help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level. It was garbage. The book is largely written and edited by LLMs and it shows on every page. It was a slop how-to book without many useful gems on how to go about…

I have historically liked Yegge's writing, and he's been pretty tuned into what's happening in tech...he rightly predicted JavaScript would take over the world (many people predicted it, as well, including me, but it wasn't obviously true to everyone for another year or two after that prediction was made). I don't think I ever really deeply disagreed with something so much as I disagree with him on AI. I mean, it's i…

I think his writing is a mix of word salad and eloquent bs.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have historically liked Yegge's writing, and he's been pretty tuned into what's happening in tech...he rightly predicted JavaScript would take over the world (many people predicted it, as well, including me, but it wasn't obviously true to everyone for another year or two after that prediction was made). I don't think I ever really deeply disagreed with something so much as I disagree with him on AI. I mean, it's i…

I think his writing is a mix of word salad and eloquent bs.

It didn’t used to be. Back in the mid 2000s I basically designed our company’s tech interview process based on a few articles he’d written about how he was doing the same at Amazon. He was a must follow for me back in the salad days of RSS. When I saw the Gastown announcement I had trouble reconciling the author and the writing.
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