Live data from Hacker News

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

theshamblog.com

341–350 of 532 posts

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

#341

> saying they set up the agent as social experiment to see if it could contribute to open source scientific software. This doesn't pass the sniff test. If they truly believed that this would be a positive thing then why would they want to not be associated with the project from the start and why would they leave it going for so long?

I think it was a social experiment from the very start, maybe one that is designed to trigger people. Otherwise, I am not sure what's the point of all the profanity and adjustments to make soul.md more offensive and confrontational than the default.

Anything and everything is a social experiment.

I can go around punching people in the face and it's a social experiement.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I write a software today that publishes a hit piece on you in 2 weeks time, will you accept that I bear no responsibility? There's no accountability gap unless you create one.

If the code you wrote appears to be for something completely different, say software to write patches for open source github projects - yes. Why would you bear responsibility for something that couldn't have been reasonably foreseen? The interesting thing about LLMs is the unpredictable emergent behaviours. That's fundamentally different from ordinary, deterministic programs.

[flagged]

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the AI companies scale down or get rid of their safety teams entirely when they realised they could be more profitable without them?

The safety teams are trivial expenses for them. They fire the safety team because explicit failure makes them look bad, or because the safety team doesn't go along with a party line and gets labeled disloyal.

The first customer is always the investor these days, so anything that threatens the investor's confidence is bad for business.

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

#344

Hmm I think he's being a little harsh on the operator. He was just messing around with $current_thing, whatever. People here are so serious, but there's worse stuff AI is already being used for as we speak from propaganda to mass surviellance and more. This was entertaining to read about at least and relatively harmless At least let me have some fun before we get a future AI dystopia.

I think you're trying to abdicate someone of their responsibility. The AI is not a child; it's a thing with human oversight. It did something in the real world with real consequences. So yes, the operator has responsibility! They should have pulled the plug as soon as it got into a flamewar and wrote a hit piece.

> It did something in the real world with real consequences.

It didn't. It made words on the internet.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the personal attack and victim blaming here. Who wouldn't want to do anything in their power to seek justice after being harmed? The hit piece you claimed as "mild" accused Scott of hypocrisy, discrimination, prejudice, insecurity, ego, and gatekeeping.

> accused Scott of hypocrisy, discrimination, prejudice, insecurity, ego, and gatekeeping. It was also a transparent confabulation - the accusations were clearly inaccurate and misguided but they were made honestly and sincerely, as an attempt to "seek justice" after witnessing perceived harm. Usually we don't call such behavior "shaming" and "bullying", we excuse it and describe it simply as trying one's best to do…

Ah, this articulates my thoughts much better than I was able to!

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

#346

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…

[deleted]

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

#347
The old “social experiment” defense. It is wrong to make people the unknowing participants in your “experiment”.

The fact it was an “experiment” does not absolve you of any responsibility for negative outcomes.

Finally, whomever sets an “AI” loose is responsible for its actions.

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

#348
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…

People get “overstimulated” from receiving one text message these days

straw that broke the camel's back. the amount of attention-leeching tech behavior has been increasing dramatically in recent years
Post reply on HN