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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

#401

Post by staticassertion »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #172
_23sd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a fourth and much more likely scenario? Some person (not OP or an AI company) used a bot to write the PR and blog posts, but was involved at every step, not actually giving any kind of "autonomy" to an agent. I see zero reason to take the bot at its word that it's doing this stuff without human steering. Or is everyone just pretending for fun and it's going over my head?

Look I'll fully cosign LLMs having some legitimate applications, but that being said, 2025 was the YEAR OF AGENTIC AI, we heard about it continuously, and I have never seen anything suggesting these things have ever, ever worked correctly. None. Zero. The few cases where it's supposedly done things are filled with so many caveats and so much deck stacking that it simply fails with even the barest whiff of skepticism…

Can you elaborate a bit on what "working correctly" would look like? I have made use of agents, so me saying "they worked correctly for me" would be evidence of them doing so, but I'd have to know what "correctly" means.

Maybe this comes down to what it would mean for an agent to do something. For example, if I were to prompt an agent then it wouldn't meet your criteria?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#402

Post by rootusrootus »

gadders wrote: post #28

"Hi Clawbot, please summarise your activities today for me." "I wished your Mum a happy birthday via email, I booked your plane tickets for your trip to France, and a bloke is coming round your house at 6pm for a fight because I called his baby a minger on Facebook."

Between clanger and minger, I'm having a good day so far expanding my vocabulary.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#403

Post by KPGv2 »

japhyr wrote: 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,…

> I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread

I disagree. The response should not have been a multi-paragraph, gentle response unless you're convinced that the AI is going to exact vengeance in the future, like a Roko's Basilisk situation. It should've just been close and block.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#404

Post by staticassertion »

brhaeh wrote: post #199
japhyr wrote: 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,…

I don't appreciate his politeness and hedging. So many projects now walk on eggshells so as not to disrupt sponsor flow or employment prospects. "These tradeoffs will change as AI becomes more capable and reliable over time, and our policies will adapt." That just legitimizes AI and basically continues the race to the bottom. Rob Pike had the correct response when spammed by a clanker.

What exactly is the goal? By laying out exactly the issues, expressing sentiment in detail, giving clear calls to action for the future, etc, the feedback is made actionable and relatable. It works both argumentatively and rhetorically.

Saying "fuck off Clanker" would not worth argumentatively nor rhetorically. It's only ever going to be "haha nice" for people who already agree and dismissed by those who don't.

I really find this whole "Responding is legitimizing, and legitimizing in all forms is bad" to be totally wrong headed.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#405

Post by zzzeek »

Im not following how he knew the retaliation was "autonomous", like someone instructed their bot to submit PRs then automatically write a nasty article if it gets rejected? Why isn't it just the human person controlling the agent then instructed it to write a nasty blog post afterwards ?

in either case, this is a human initiated event and it's pretty lame

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#408

Post by redox99 »

trollbridge wrote: post #56
discordianfish wrote: post #27

The agent is free to maintain a fork of the project. Would be actually quite interesting to see how this turns out.

If AI actually has hit the levels that Sequoia, Anthropic, et al claim it has, then autonomous AI agents should be forking projects and making them so much better that we'd all be using their vastly improved forks. Why isn't this happening?

The agents are not that good yet, but with human supervision they are there already.

I've forked a couple of npm packages, and have agents implement the changes I want plus keep them in sync with upstream. Without agents I wouldn't have done that because it's too much of a hassle.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#409

Post by tjhorner »

famouswaffles wrote: post #382
tjhorner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I'm with you there. In either case, their behavior is unacceptable and reads as bad faith.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#410

Post by pmg101 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #360
anonymars wrote: post #323

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]

This is a deranged take. Lots of slurs end in "er" because they describe someone who does something - for example, a wanker, one who wanks. Or a tosser, one who tosses. Or a clanker, one who clanks.

The fact that the N word doesn't even follow this pattern tells you it's a totally unrelated slur.

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