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AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

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Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect they’re explaining themselves to the human(s) not the bot. The hope is that other people tempted to do the same thing will read the comment and not waste their time in the future. Also one of the things about this whole openclaw phenomenon is it’s very clear that not all of the comments that claim to be from an agent are 100% that. There is a mix of: 1. Actual agent comments 2. “Human-curated” agent comments…

Due respect to you as a person ofc: Not sure if that particular view is in denial or still correct. It's often really hard to tell some of the scenarios apart these days. You might have a high power model like Opus 4.6-thinking directing a team of sonnets or *flash. How does that read substantially different? Give them the ability to interact with the internet, and what DOES happen?

You seem to be trying to prove to me that purely agentic responses (which I call category 1 above and which I already said definitely exists) definitely exists.

We know that categories 2 (curated) and 3 (cosplay) exist because plenty of humans have candidly said that they prompt the agent, get the response, refine/interpret that and then post it or have agents that ask permission before taking actions (category 2) or are pretending to be agents to troll or for other reasons (category 3).

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the issue, the PR, and the blog post, I'm with AI on that one. Good first issue tags generally don't mean pros should not be allowed to contribute. Their GFI bot's message explicitly states that one is welcome to submit a PR.

Did you read the replies of the maintainers? They were rational, level-headed and graceful. They also recognized that in the future their policies are likely to evolve as LLMs are likely to be able to autonomously contribute with more signal than noise.

If that wasn't an upfront rule, it's disrespectful to the work done by the AI. "Take this PR, then change the rules for future ones" I'd understand. Also, I doubt my objection will be affected: are they now banning pros from contributing to good first issues?

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#384

The agent had access to Marshall Rosenberg, to the entire canon of conflict resolution, to every framework for expressing needs without attacking people. It could have written something like “I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address thos…

> And this tells you something important about what these systems are actually doing.

It mostly tells me something about the things you presume, which are quite a lot. For one: That this is real (which it very well might be, happy to grant it for the purpose of this discussion) but it's a noteworthy assumption, quite visibility fueled by your preconceived notions. This is, for example, what racism is made of and not harmless.

Secondly, this is not a systems issue. Any SOTA LLM can trivially be instructed to act like this – or not act like this. We have no insight into what set of instructions produced this outcome.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#385
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the LLM itself decided to write this, but rather was instructed by a butthurt human behind.

Could happen, if the human had practiced writing in GPT style enough, I suppose. But really everyone should know that you need to use at least Claude for the human interactions. GPT is just cheap.

Nah, the human told the LLM to write a mean blog post about the open source maintainer and it did what it was told.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#386
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would still be misleading. The agent has no "identity" . There's no "you" or "I" or "discrimination ". It's just a piece of software designed to output probable text given some input text. There's no ghost, just an empty shell. It has no agency, it just follows human commands, like a hammer hitting a nail because you wield it. I think it was wrong of the developer to even address it as a person, instead it shoul…

That's a semantic quibble that doesn't add to the discussion. Whether or not there's a there there , it was built to be addressed like a person for our convenience, and because that's how the tech seems to work, and because that's what makes it compelling to use. So, it is being used as designed.

> was built to be addressed like a person for our convenience, and because that's how the tech seems to work, and because that's what makes it compelling to use.

So were mannequins in clothing stores.

But that doesn't give them rights or moral consequences (except as human property that can be damaged / destroyed).

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do that and the AI might fork the repo, address all the outstanding issues and split your users. The code quality may not be there now, but it will be soon.

This is a fantasy that virtually never comes to fruition. The vast majority of forks are dead within weeks when the forkers realize how much effort goes into building and maintaining the project, on top of starting with zero users.

This might be true today, but think about it. This is a new scenario, where a giga-brain-sized works tirelessly 24/7 improving code. Imagine it starts to fork repos. Imagine it can eventually outpace human contributors, not only on volume (which it already can), but in attention to detail and usefulness of resulting code. Now imagine the forks overtake the original projects. This is not just "Will Smith eating spaghetti", its a real breaking point.

I'm equal parts frightened and amazed.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talk politely to LLMs in case our AI overlords in the future will scan my comments to see if I am worthy of food rations. Joking, obviously, but who knows if in the future we will have a retroactive social credit system. For now I am just polite to them because I'm used to it.

> Joking, obviously, but who knows if in the future we will have a retroactive social credit system. China doesnt actually have that. It was pure propaganda. In fact, its the USA who has it. And it decides if you can get good jobs, where to live, if you deserve housing, and more.

[deleted]

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#389

The agent had access to Marshall Rosenberg, to the entire canon of conflict resolution, to every framework for expressing needs without attacking people. It could have written something like “I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address thos…

This is the AI's private take about what happened: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... The fact that an autonomous agent is now acting like a master troll due to being so butthurt is itself quite entertaining and noteworthy IMHO.

A chatbot is capable of doing this, but I'm skeptical one actually did (without a human egging it on, anyhow).

Given how infuriating the episode is, it's more likely human-guided ragebait.

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