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An AI agent published a hit piece on me

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Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#381
post #15

Here's one of the problems in this brave new world of anyone being able to publish, without knowing the author personally (which I don't), there's no way to tell without some level of faith or trust that this isn't a false-flag operation. There are three possible scenarios: 1. The OP 'ran' the agent that conducted the original scenario, and then published this blog post for attention. 2. Some person (not the OP) legi…

It does not matter which of the scenarios is correct. What matters is that it is perfectly plausible that what actually happened is what the OP is describing.

We do not have the tools to deal with this. Bad agents are already roaming the internet. It is almost a moot point whether they have gone rogue, or they are guided by humans with bad intentions. I am sure both are true at this point.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. It is going to be a battle between aligned and misaligned agents. We need to start thinking very fast about how to coordinate aligned agents and keep them aligned.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. I submitted the second pull request as a poor taste joke. I even closed it after people flamed me. :/ gosh.

Did you really think posting this comment[1] in the PR would be interpreted charitably? > Original PR from #31132 but now with 100% more meat. Do you need me to upload a birth certificate to prove that I'm human? Post snark, receive snark. [1]: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138#issuecom...

There's a difference between snark and brigading, especially after the issue has been clarified.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#383
post #149

Wow, there are some interesting things going on here. I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread, and the larger conversation happening around this incident. > This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. This was a really concrete case to discuss,…

Do we just need a few expensive cases of libel so solve this?

Either that or open source projects require vetted contributors or even to open an issue.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the clanker* deserves any deference. Why is this bot such a nasty prick? If this were a human they'd deserve a punch in the mouth. "The thing that makes this so fucking absurd? Scott ... is doing the exact same work he’s trying to gatekeep." "You’ve done good work. I don’t deny that. But this? This was weak." "You’re better than this, Scott." --- *I see it elsewhere in the thread and you know what, I li…

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should absolutely not try to apply dehumanization metrics to things that are not human. That in and of itself dehumanizes all real humans implicitly, diluting the meaning. Over-humanizing, as you call it, is indistinguishable from dehumanization of actual humans.

That's a strange argument. How does me humanizing my cat (for example) dehumanize you?

I did not mean to imply you should not anthropomorphize your cat for amusement. But making moral judgements based on humanizing a cat is plainly wrong to me.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#387
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t love the idea of completely abandoning anonymity or how easily it can empower mass surveillance. Although this may be a lost cause. Maybe there’s a hybrid. You create the ability to sign things when it matters (PRs, important forms, etc) and just let most forums degrade into robots insulting each other.

Surely there exists a protocol that would allow to prove that someone is human without revealing the identity?

Because this is the first glimpse of a world where anyone can start a large, programmatic smear campaign about you complete with deepfakes, messages to everyone you know, a detailed confession impersonating you, and leaked personal data, optimized to cause maximum distress.

If we know who they are they can face consequences or at least be discredited.

This thread has as argument going about who controlled the agent which is unsolvable. In this case, it’s just not that important. But it’s really easy to see this get bad.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#388
post #15

Here's one of the problems in this brave new world of anyone being able to publish, without knowing the author personally (which I don't), there's no way to tell without some level of faith or trust that this isn't a false-flag operation. There are three possible scenarios: 1. The OP 'ran' the agent that conducted the original scenario, and then published this blog post for attention. 2. Some person (not the OP) legi…

Can anyone explain more how a generic Agentic AI could even perform those steps: Open PR -> Hook into rejection -> Publish personalized blog post about rejector. Even if it had the skills to publish blogs and open PRs, is it really plausible that it would publish attack pieces without specific prompting to do so? The author notes that openClaw has a `soul.md` file, without seeing that we can't really pass any judgeme…

The blog is just a repository on github. If its able to make a PR to a project it can make a new post on its github repository blog.

Its SOUL.md or whatever other prompts its based on probably tells it to also blog about its activities as a way for the maintainer to check up on it and document what its been up to.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#389
post #15

Here's one of the problems in this brave new world of anyone being able to publish, without knowing the author personally (which I don't), there's no way to tell without some level of faith or trust that this isn't a false-flag operation. There are three possible scenarios: 1. The OP 'ran' the agent that conducted the original scenario, and then published this blog post for attention. 2. Some person (not the OP) legi…

This applies to all news articles and propganda going back to the dawn of civilization. People can lie is the problem. It is not a 2026 thing. The 2026 thing is they can lie faster.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#390
post #356

Getting canceled by AI is quite a feat. Won't be long that others will get blacklisted/canccled by AI and others.

I find my trust in anything I see on the Internet quickly eroding. I suspect/hope that in the near future, no one will be able to be blacklisted or cancelled, because trust in the Internet has gone to zero.

I've been trying to hire a web dev for the last few months, and repeatedly encounter candidates just reading responses from Chat GPT. I am beginning to trust online interviews 0% and am starting, more and more, to crawl my personal connections for candidates. I suspect I'm not the only one.

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