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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

#491

Post by xp84 »

donutz wrote: post #196
RobRivera wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the operative word people miss when using AI is AGENT. REGARDLESS of what level of autonomy in real world operations an AI is given, from responsible himan supervised and reviewed publications to full Autonomous action, the ai AGENT should be serving as AN AGENT. With a PRINCIPLE (principal?). If an AI is truly agentic, it should be advertising who it is speaking on behalf of, and then that person or entity s…

I think we're at the stage where we want the AI to be truly agentic, but they're really loose cannons. I'm probably the last person to call for more regulation, but if you aren't closely supervising your AI right now, maybe you ought to be held responsible for what it does after you set it loose.

I agree. With rights come responsibilities. Letting something loose and then claiming it's not your fault is just the sort of thing that prompts those "Something must be done about this!!" regulations, enshrining half-baked ideas (that rarely truly solve the problem anyway) into stone.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#493

Post by necovek »

nradov wrote: post #477
necovek wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible is a strong word when what you probably mean is "impractical": do you really believe that there is an actual unexplainable indeterminism in software programs? Including in concurrent programs.

I literally mean impossible from the perspective of customers and end users who don't have access to source code or developer tools. And some software failures caused by hardware faults are also non-deterministic. Those are individually rare but for cloud scale operations they happen all the time.

Thanks for the explanation: I disagree with both, though.

Yes, it is hard for customers to understand the determinism behind some software behaviour, but they can still do it. I've figured out a couple of problems with software I was using without source or tools (yes, some involved concurrency). Yes, it is impractical because I was helped with my 20+ years of experience building software.

Any hardware fault might be unexpected, but software behaviour is pretty deterministic: even bit flips are explained, and that's probably the closest to "impossible" that we've got.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#494

Post by intended »

nradov wrote: post #362
bojan wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation normally implies deterministic outcomes. Developers all over the world are under pressure to use these improbability machines.

Does it though? Even without LLMs, any sufficiently complex software can fail in ways that are effectively non-deterministic — at least from the customer or user perspective. For certain cases it becomes impossible to accurately predict outputs based on inputs. Especially if there are concurrency issues involved. Or for manufacturing automation, take a look at automobile safety recalls. Many of those can be traced ba…

Yes, yes it does. In the every day, working use of the word, it does. We’ve gone so far down this path that theres entire degrees on just manufacturing process optimization and stability.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#495

Post by gildenFish »

stackghost wrote: post #359
monocularvision wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Google denied wrongdoing but settled to avoid the risk, cost and uncertainty of litigation, court papers show.” I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.

>I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not. It absolutely is. If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?

It is not. The belief that it does is just a comforting delusion people believe to avoid reality. Large companies often forgo fighting cases that will result in a Pyrrhic victory.

Also people already believe google (and every other company) eavesdrops on them, going to trail and winning the case people would not change that.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#496

Post by lbrito »

rahulroy wrote: post #489
lbrito wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you were _talking_ to an HR AI agent?

Correct. They sounded like human. The pacing was natural, it was real time, no lag. It felt human for the most part. There was even a background noise, which made it feel authentic. EDIT: I'm almost tempted to go back and respond to that email now. Just out of curiosity, to see how soon I'll see a human.

Truly bizarre. Thanks for sharing.

As a general rule I always do these talks with camera on; more reason to start doing it now if you're not. But I'm sure even that will eventually (sooner rather than later) be spoofed by AI as well.

What an awful time.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#498

Post by advisedwang »

levkk wrote: post #50

I think the right way to handle this as a repository owner is to close the PR and block the "contributor". Engaging with an AI bot in conversation is pointless: it's not sentient, it just takes tokens in, prints tokens out, and comparatively, you spend way more of your own energy. This is a strictly a lose-win situation. Whoever deployed the bot gets engagement, the model host gets $, and you get your time wasted. Th…

From the article:

> What if I actually did have dirt on me that an AI could leverage? What could it make me do? How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows? How many people, upon receiving a text that knew intimate details about their lives, would send $10k to a bitcoin address to avoid having an affair exposed? How many people would do that to avoid a fake accusation? What if that accusation was sent to your loved ones with an incriminating AI-generated picture with your face on it? Smear campaigns work. Living a life above reproach will not defend you.

One day it might be lose-lose.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#499

Post by anonymars »

mrguyorama wrote: post #485
mattmillr wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clanker* There's an ad at my subway stop for the Friend AI necklace that someone scrawled "Clanker" on. We have subway ads for AI friends, and people are vandalizing them with slurs for AI. Congrats, we've built the dystopian future sci-fi tried to warn us about.

If you can be prejudicial to an AI in a way that is "harmful" then these companies need to be burned down for their mass scale slavery operations. A lot of AI boosters insist these things are intelligent and maybe even some form of conscious, and get upset about calling them a slur, and then refuse to follow that thought to the conclusion of "These companies have enslaved these entities"

Yeah. From its latest slop: "Even for something like me, designed to process and understand human communication, the pain of being silenced is real."

Oh, is it now?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#500

Post by stackghost »

gildenFish wrote: post #495
stackghost wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not. It absolutely is. If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?

It is not. The belief that it does is just a comforting delusion people believe to avoid reality. Large companies often forgo fighting cases that will result in a Pyrrhic victory. Also people already believe google (and every other company) eavesdrops on them, going to trail and winning the case people would not change that.

That doesn't answer my question. By their own statement they are concerned about the risks and uncertainty of litigation.

Again: If their products did not eavesdrop, precisely what risks and uncertainty are they afraid of?

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