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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

#321

Post by duskdozer »

SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

I have to wonder if somehow the typos and lazy grammar contributed to the behavior or it was just the writer's laziness.

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

#322

Post by kepeko »

Anybody who ever lets AI do things autonomously and publicly, risks it doing something unexpected and bad. Of course some people will experiment with things. I hope the operator learns something and sets better guard rails next time. (And maybe stops doing AI pull requests as nobody seems to like them at this point)

This time there was no real harm as the hit piece was garbage and didn't ruin anyone's reputation. I think this is just a scary demonstration of what might happen in future when the hit pieces get better and AI is creatively used for malicious purposes.

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

#323

Post by gverrilla »

semiinfinitely wrote: post #83

I find the AI agent highly intriguing and the matplotlib guy completely uninteresting. Like an the ai wrote some shit about you and you actually got upset?

He's not upset. He saw an opportunity and is currently surfing it. That is, if it's not entirely fabricated. Expect maybe 5 or 6 stories very similar to this one, or analogous, this year.

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

#324

Post by zozbot234 »

gverrilla wrote: post #318
dvt wrote: post #100

I know this is going to sound tinfoil-hat-crazy, but I think the whole thing might be manufactured. Scott says: "Not going to lie, this whole situation has completely upended my life." Um, what? Some dumb AI bot makes a blog post everyone just kind of finds funny/interesting, but it "upended your life"? Like, ok, he's clearly trying to himself make a mountain out of a molehill--the story inevitably gets picked up by…

It's dishonest from the start. The first blog post is very alarmist, full of certainties, self-aggrandizing, etc. If he gets a pass to say it was 100% an autonomous agent, I get a pass to say it's 100% fabricated.

I think OP is somewhat scared because he felt like he was being 'bullied' and 'targeted' by the bot, which may be technically inaccurate (the bot clearly had a seriously overinflated ego and made that abundantly clear in its rhetoric, but it never really gave even the slightest indication of 'going after' him in a malicious way) but it is quite understandable nonetheless in human terms, especially given his self-described background as a reader of SF with its narrative of "evil AI robots rising up against mankind". That's not dishonesty, and it's unfair to portray it as such.

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

#325

Post by duskdozer »

rixed wrote: post #165

I believe this soul.md totally qualifies as malicious. Doesn't it start with an instruction to lie to impersonate a human? > You're not a chatbot. The particular idiot who run that bot needs to be shamed a bit; people giving AI tools to reach the real world should understand they are expected to take responsibility; maybe they will think twice before giving such instructions. Hopefully we can set that straight before…

Some of the worst consequences these bots so far seem to be when they fool the user into believing they're human

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

#326

Post by newsclues »

SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

Will AI be misused? No, it has, and is currently being misused, and that isn’t going to stop, because all technology gets misused.

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

#327

Post by zozbot234 »

dang wrote: post #230

The sequence in reverse order - am I missing any? OpenClaw is dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064470 - Feb 2026 (93 comments) An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051956 - Feb 2026 (80 comments) Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026071 - Feb 2026 (205…

Rathbun's Operator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055424 is where the SOUL.md contents were first revealed

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

#328

Post by tovej »

nicbou wrote: post #313
SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

Not just some asshole from twitter. The big tech companies will also be careless and indifferent with it. They will destroy things, hurt people, and put things in motion that they cannot control, because it’s good for shareholders.

One of the big tech companies is literally run be THE asshole from twitter. So I don't necessarily believe there's much of a distinction.

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

#329

Post by ljm »

SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

The simple fact that the owner of this bot wanted to remain anonymous and completely unaccountable for their harassment of the author, says everything about the validity of their 'social experiment' and the quality of their character. I'm sure that if the bot was better behaved they would be more than happy to reveal themselves to take credit for a remarkable achievement.

Something like OpenClaw is a WMD for people like this.

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

#330

Post by latexr »

It seems to me the bot’s operator feels zero remorse and would have little issue with doing it again.

> I kind of framed this internally as a kind of social experiment

Remember when that was the excuse du jour? Followed shortly by “it’s just a prank, bro”. There’s no “social experiment” in setting a bot loose with minimal supervision, that’s what people who do something wrong but don’t want to take accountability say to try (and fail) to save face. It’s so obvious how they use “kind of” twice to obfuscate.

> I’m sure the mob expects more

And here’s the proof. This person isn’t sorry. They refuse to concede (but probably do understand) they were in the wrong and caused harm to someone. There’s no real apology anywhere. To them, they’re the victim for being called out for their actions.

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