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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

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Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#201

Post by ojame »

moezd wrote: post #127

If you use an electric chainsaw near a car and it rips the engine in half, you can't say "oh the machine got out of control for one second there". you caused real harm, you will pay the price for it. Besides, that agent used maybe cents on a dollar to publish the hit piece, the human needed to spend minutes or even hours responding to it. This is an effective loss of productivity caused by AI. Honestly, if this happe…

If you write code that powers an EV's 'self driving mode' - which makes calculated choices, sell it and deploy it, when that car gets into an accident under 'self driving mode', you may not be liable (depending on the case and jurisdiction - as proven in the past). The driver is.

There are many instances (where I am from, at least - and I believe in the USA), where 'accidents' happen and individuals are found not guilty. As long as you can prove that it wasn't due to negligence. Could "don't be an asshole" as instructions be enough in some arenas to prove they aren't negligent? I believe so.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#202

Post by biztos »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
lynndotpy wrote: post #30

> Again I do not know why MJ Rathbun decided based on your PR comment to post some kind of takedown blog post, This wording is detached from reality and conveniently absolves responsibility from the person who did this. There was one decision maker involved here, and it was the person who decided to run the program that produced this text and posted it online. It's not a second, independent being. It's a computer pro…

This is how it will go: AI prompted by human creates something useful? Human will try to take credit. AI wrecks something: human will blame AI. It's externalization on the personal level, the money and the glory is for you, the misery for the rest of the world.

So, management basically?

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#203

Post by DavidPiper »

palmotea wrote: post #161
DavidPiper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in concept, but it's still 100% category error to talk like this. AIs don't have souls. They don't have egos. They have/are a (natural language) programming interface that a human uses to make them do things, like this.

> I agree with you in concept, but it's still 100% category error to talk like this. It's a category error heavily promoted by the makers of these LLMs and their fans. Take an existing word that implies something very advanced (thinking, soul, etc.) and apply it grandiosely to some bit of your product. Then you can confuse people into thinking your product is much more grand and important. It's thinking! It has a sou…

Oh, completely. I've started calling people on it in-person and it's been quite interesting to see who understands this immediately with a single prompt (no pun intended), and who is a true believer, as it were.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#204

Post by XorNot »

abnry wrote: post #180
lynndotpy wrote: post #30

> Again I do not know why MJ Rathbun decided based on your PR comment to post some kind of takedown blog post, This wording is detached from reality and conveniently absolves responsibility from the person who did this. There was one decision maker involved here, and it was the person who decided to run the program that produced this text and posted it online. It's not a second, independent being. It's a computer pro…

I'm still struggling to care about the "hit piece". It's an AI. Who cares what it says? Refusing AI commits is just like any other moderation decision people experience on the web anywhere else.

Scale matters and even with people it's a problem: fixated persons are a problem because most people don't understand just how much nuisance one irrationally obsessed person can create.

Now instead add in AI agents writing plausibly human text and multiply by basically infinity.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#205

Post by DavidPiper »

Terr_ wrote: post #183
DavidPiper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in concept, but it's still 100% category error to talk like this. AIs don't have souls. They don't have egos. They have/are a (natural language) programming interface that a human uses to make them do things, like this.

Within the framing that it's all fundamentally a make-document-longer algorithm, I propose "seed document." While there's some metaphor to it, it's the kind behind "seed crystals" for ice and minerals, referring to non-living and mostly-mathematical process. If someone went around talking about how the importance of "Soul Crystals" or "Ego Crystals", they would quite rightly attract a lot of very odd looks, at least…

I quite like seed but for a different reason - if you squint a bit, it looks like a natural evolution of a random number seed.

My complaint against seed would be that it still harkens back to a biological process that could be easily and creatively conflated when it's convenient.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#206

Post by neilv »

> They explained that they switched between multiple models from multiple providers such that no one company had the full picture of what this AI was doing.

Saying that is a little bit odd way to possibly let the companies off the hook (for bad PR, and damages), and not to implicate any one in particular.

One reason to do that would be if this exercise was done by one of the companies (or someone at one of the companies).

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#207

Post by throw77488 »

andrewflnr wrote: post #116
lynndotpy wrote: post #30

> Again I do not know why MJ Rathbun decided based on your PR comment to post some kind of takedown blog post, This wording is detached from reality and conveniently absolves responsibility from the person who did this. There was one decision maker involved here, and it was the person who decided to run the program that produced this text and posted it online. It's not a second, independent being. It's a computer pro…

If you are holding a gun, and you cannot predict or control what the bullets will hit, you do not fire the gun . If you have a program, and you cannot predict or control what effect it will have, you do not run the program .

More like a dog. Person has no responsibility for an autonomous agent, gun is not autonomous.

It is socially acceptable to bring dangerous predators to public spaces, and let them run loose. First bite is free, owner has no responsibility, no way knowing dog could injure someone.

Repeated threats of violence (barking), stalking and shitting on someones front yard, are also fine, and healthy behavior. Person can attack random kid, send it to hospital, and claim it "provoked them". Brutal police violence is also fine, if done indirectly by autonomous agent.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#208

Post by Eisenstein »

hxugufjfjf wrote: post #150
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happens every single time when there is a security breach and private information is lost. We take your privacy and security very seriously. There is no evidence that your data has been misused. Out of an abundance of caution… We remain committed to... will continue to work tirelessly to earn ... restore your trust ... confidence.

What else would you see them do or say beyond this canned response? The reason I am asking is because people almost always bring up how dissatisfied they are with such apologies, yet I’ve never seen a good alternative that someone would be happy with. I don’t work in PR or anything, just curious if there is a better way.

Not apologize if they don't actually care. An insincere apology is an insult.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#209

Post by overgard »

dinp wrote: post #24

Zooming out a little, all the ai companies invested a lot of resources into safety research and guardrails, but none of that prevented a "straightforward" misalignment. I'm not sure how to reconcile this, maybe we shouldn't be so confident in our predictions about the future? I see a lot of discourse along these lines: - have bold, strong beliefs about how ai is going to evolve - implicitly assume it's practically gu…

Don't these companies keep firing their safety teams?

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#210

Post by avaer »

dinp wrote: post #24

Zooming out a little, all the ai companies invested a lot of resources into safety research and guardrails, but none of that prevented a "straightforward" misalignment. I'm not sure how to reconcile this, maybe we shouldn't be so confident in our predictions about the future? I see a lot of discourse along these lines: - have bold, strong beliefs about how ai is going to evolve - implicitly assume it's practically gu…

Remember when GPT-3 had a $100 spending cap because the model was too dangerous to be let out into the wild?

Between these models egging people on to suicide, straightforward jailbreaks, and now damage caused by what seems to be a pretty trivial set of instructions running in a loop, I have no idea what AI safety research at these companies is actually doing.

I don't think their definition of "safety" involves protecting anything but their bottom line.

The tragedy is that you won't hear from the people who are actually concerned about this and refuse to release dangerous things into the world, because they aren't raising a billion dollars.

I'm not arguing for stricter controls -- if anything I think models should be completely uncensored; the law needs to get with the times and severely punish the operators of AI for what their AI does.

What bothers me is that the push for AI safety is really just a ruse for companies like OpenAI to ID you and exercise control over what you do with their product.

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