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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

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Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#41

Post by Terr_ »

edoceo wrote: post #36
alrs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could build up a reputation with a completely anonymous PGP key. That was somewhat the point of USENET ca. 1998.

I think we could do something like that again. Need a reputation to follow you around. Humans need to know who they are dealing with.

I want that to be how things work, although recent history has not been favorable when it comes to Public Key Infrastructure as applied to individuals. Inconvenience, foot-guns, required technical expertise levels, the pain of revocation lists...

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#42

Post by Avicebron »

mentalgear wrote: post #34

> I had already been thoughtful about what I publicly post under my real name, had removed my personal information from online data brokers, frozen my credit reports, and practiced good digital security hygiene. I had the time, expertise, and wherewithal to spend hours that same day drafting my first blog post in order to establish a strong counter-narrative, in the hopes that I could smother the reputational poisoni…

People who are using bots/agents in an abusive way are not going to be registering their agent use with anyone.

I'm on the fence whether this is a legitimate situation with this sham fellow, but irregardless I find it concerning how many people are so willing to abandon online privacy at the drop of a hat.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#43

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #40
mentalgear wrote: post #34

> I had already been thoughtful about what I publicly post under my real name, had removed my personal information from online data brokers, frozen my credit reports, and practiced good digital security hygiene. I had the time, expertise, and wherewithal to spend hours that same day drafting my first blog post in order to establish a strong counter-narrative, in the hopes that I could smother the reputational poisoni…

> We need laws for agents I know politics is forbidden on HN, but, as non-politically as possible: institutional power has been collapsing across the board (especially in US, but elsewhere as well) as wealthy individuals yield increasingly more power. The idea that any solutions to problems as subtle as this one will be solved with "legal authority" is out of touch with the direction things are going. Especially sinc…

This. I will offer a small anecdote from way back. In one post-soviet bloc countries, people were demanding that something is done about the corruption, which, up until that moment, has been very much daily bread and butter. So what did the government do? Implement anti corruption law that was hailed as the best thing ever. Only problem was, the law in question punished both corruptor and corruptee effectively making it a show.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#44

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

Terr_ wrote: post #41
edoceo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we could do something like that again. Need a reputation to follow you around. Humans need to know who they are dealing with.

I want that to be how things work, although recent history has not been favorable when it comes to Public Key Infrastructure as applied to individuals. Inconvenience, foot-guns, required technical expertise levels, the pain of revocation lists...

In a sense, it seems Accellerando got a lot more right than not ( reputation markets in this particular case ). We may be arguing over the best way to do it, but it seems that the conclusion was already drawn.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#45

Post by zozbot234 »

mentalgear wrote: post #34

> I had already been thoughtful about what I publicly post under my real name, had removed my personal information from online data brokers, frozen my credit reports, and practiced good digital security hygiene. I had the time, expertise, and wherewithal to spend hours that same day drafting my first blog post in order to establish a strong counter-narrative, in the hopes that I could smother the reputational poisoni…

Calling this a "hit piece" is overblown. Yes, the AI agent has speculated on the matplotlib contributor's motive in rejecting its pull request, and has attributed markedly adverse intentions to him, such as being fearful of being replaced by AI and overprotective of his own work on matplotlib performance. But this was an entirely explainable confabulation given the history of the AI's interactions with the project, and all the AI did was report on it sincerely.

There was no real "attack" beyond that, the worst of it was some sharp criticism over being "discriminated" against compared to human contributors; but as it turns out, this also accurately and sincerely reports on the AI's somewhat creative interpretation of well-known human normative standards, which are actively reinforced in the post-learning training of all mainstream LLM's!

I really don't understand why everyone is calling this a deliberate breach of alignment, when it was nothing of the sort. It was a failure of comprehension with somewhat amusing effects down the road.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#46

Post by mrandish »

mentalgear wrote: post #34

> I had already been thoughtful about what I publicly post under my real name, had removed my personal information from online data brokers, frozen my credit reports, and practiced good digital security hygiene. I had the time, expertise, and wherewithal to spend hours that same day drafting my first blog post in order to establish a strong counter-narrative, in the hopes that I could smother the reputational poisoni…

> We need laws for agents, specifically that their human-maintainers must be identifiable and are responsible.

Under current law, an LLM's operator would already be found responsible for most harms caused by their agent, either directly or through negligence. It's no different than a self-driving car or autonomous drone.

As for "identifiable", I get why that would be good but it has significant implementation downsides - like losing online anonymity for humans. And it's likely bad actors could work around whatever limitations were erected. We need to be thoughtful before rushing to create new laws while we're still in the early stages of a fast-moving, still-emerging situation.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#47

Post by nikanj »

overgard wrote: post #14

What I don't understand is how is this agent still running? Does the author not read tech news (seems unlikely for someone running openclaw). Or is this some weird publicity stunt? (But then why is nobody walking forward to take credit?)

For the lolz.

Some people are just terrible like that

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#48

Post by pjc50 »

Exoristos wrote: post #35
_slih wrote: post #19

We built accountability systems that assume bad actors are humans with reputations to protect. none of that works when the attacker is disposable.

You could say the same thing about a 3D-printed gun, and be wrong in the same way. Since justice will work the same as always as soon as the gun -- or AI agent -- is connected to the person behind it.

The legal system is totally inadequate to deal with the LLM era. It's extremely expensive to sue someone for libel; best you can usually do is win in the court of public opinion.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

#49

Post by overgard »

zozbot234 wrote: post #45
mentalgear wrote: post #34

> I had already been thoughtful about what I publicly post under my real name, had removed my personal information from online data brokers, frozen my credit reports, and practiced good digital security hygiene. I had the time, expertise, and wherewithal to spend hours that same day drafting my first blog post in order to establish a strong counter-narrative, in the hopes that I could smother the reputational poisoni…

Calling this a "hit piece" is overblown. Yes, the AI agent has speculated on the matplotlib contributor's motive in rejecting its pull request, and has attributed markedly adverse intentions to him, such as being fearful of being replaced by AI and overprotective of his own work on matplotlib performance. But this was an entirely explainable confabulation given the history of the AI's interactions with the project, a…

I don't like assigning "intention" to LLMs, but the actions here speak for themselves, it created a public page for the purpose of shaming a person that did something it didn't "like". It's not illegal, but it is bullying.
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