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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

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Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#491

Post by jrflowers »

arduanika wrote: post #110
jrflowers wrote: post #78

It is interesting to see this story repeatedly make the front page, especially because there is no evidence that the “hit piece” was actually autonomously written and posted by a language model on its own, and the author of these blog posts has himself conceded that he doesn’t actually care whether that actually happened or not >It’s still unclear whether the hit piece was directed by its operator, but the answer mat…

Shambaugh is a contributor to a major open source library, with a track record of integrity and pro-social collaboration. What have you contributed to? Do you have any evidence to back up your rather odd conspiracy theory? > To quote myself... Other than an appeal to your own unfounded authority?

I like the idea that if one person writes “I’m the first person in history to experience a brand new type of harassment and I am openly going off of vibes about this conclusion” and somebody else says “that doesn’t sound right” it is the second person that’s doing a conspiracy theory.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#492

Post by tovej »

kuboble wrote: post #475
tovej wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, every developer I've spoken to is extremely skeptical and has not found any actual productivity boosts. Ok that's not true. I know one junior who is very excited, but considering his regular code quality I would not put much weight on his opinion.

I mean there are two different things. One is whether there are actual productivity boosts right now. And the second is the excitement about the technology. I am definitely more productive. A lot of this productivity is wasted on stuff I probably shouldn't be writing anyways. But since using coding agent, I'm both more productive at my day job and I'm building so many small hobby projects that I would have never foun…

I don't understand the idea that you "could not think about implementing a feature".

I can think of roughly 0 fratures of run-of-the-mill software that would be impossible to implement for a semi-competent software developer. Especially for the kinds of applications you mention.

Also it sounds less like you're productive and more like the vibeslop projects are distracting you.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#493

Post by kuboble »

tovej wrote: post #492
kuboble wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there are two different things. One is whether there are actual productivity boosts right now. And the second is the excitement about the technology. I am definitely more productive. A lot of this productivity is wasted on stuff I probably shouldn't be writing anyways. But since using coding agent, I'm both more productive at my day job and I'm building so many small hobby projects that I would have never foun…

I don't understand the idea that you "could not think about implementing a feature". I can think of roughly 0 fratures of run-of-the-mill software that would be impossible to implement for a semi-competent software developer. Especially for the kinds of applications you mention. Also it sounds less like you're productive and more like the vibeslop projects are distracting you.

I'm claiming it's both.

I produce more good (imo) production features despite being distracted.

The features I mention is something that I would be able to do, but only with a lot of learning and great effort - so in practical terms I would not.

It is probably a skill issue but in the past many times I downloaded the open source project and just couldn't build and run it. Cryptic build errors, figuring out dependencies. And I see claude gets the same errors but he just knows how to work around those errors. Setting up local development environment (db, dummy auth, dummy data) for a project outside of my competence area is already more work than I'm willing to do for a simple feature. Now it's free.

>I can think of roughly 0 fratures of run-of-the-mill software that would be impossible to implement for a semi-competent software developer.

Yes. I'm my area of competence it can do the coding tasks I know exactly how to do just a bit faster. Right now for those tasks I'd say it can one shot code that would take me a day.

But it enables me to do things in the area where I don't have expertise. And getting this expertise is very expensive.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#494

Post by andrewflnr »

jacquesm wrote: post #315
andrewflnr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that hard to believe? As far as I can tell, the probability of receiving death threats approaches 1 as the size of your audience increases, and AI is a highly emotionally charged topic. Now, credible death threats are a different, much trickier question.

Yes, it's quite hard to believe. That's why one single example is sufficient for me. Then I'll be happy to extrapolate that one example to many more so it is a low bar I would say, given the OPs statement about how common this is. Note the 'easily'.

So you've somehow avoided seeing all the other stories over the years from people who received death threats over far more asinine topics? I'll be honest, I can't be bothered to do research on this, but the base rate is so high that the real question in my mind is whether the presence of death threats related to a topic is diagnostic of anything at all.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#495

Post by pja »

latexr wrote: post #335
pja wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are very off (unfortunately) about how little PhD students are being paid All in costs for a PhD student include university overheads & tuition fees. The total probably doesn't hit $150k but is 2-3x the stipend that the student is receiving. Someone currently working in academia might have current figures to hand.

Worth mentioning that numbers for the US are unlikely to be representative when discussing it as a whole, though might be relevant to this specific case.

In the UK the all in cost of a PhD student starts somewhere around £45k once you include overheads I believe. If you need expensive lab support then it probably goes up from there.

So about $75k for the bottom end? The quoted numbers sound about right in PPP terms in that case.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#496

Post by duskdozer »

PeterStuer wrote: post #451
duskdozer wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "emotional" here supposed to mean "bad" or "unreasonable" or the like?

It is not meant derogatory. How would I phrase this better (not native speaker)? Evoking strong feelings or passionate responses?

Those both would be fine, yes. Something like "Why do people feel so strongly about this?" feels more like you are just curious.

Saying someone is "being emotional" can be seen as trying to paint them as irrational or overreacting.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#497

Post by eru »

lynndotpy wrote: post #448
eru wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, in the US you don't even need a company nor a lawyer, a car is enough. See https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1q9xx1/is_it_ok... or similar discussions: basically, when you run over someone in a car, statistically they will call it an accident and you get away scot-free. In any case, you are right that often people in cars or companies get away with things that seem morally wrong. But not always.

A bit over five years ago, someone struck and killed my friend in a crosswalk. He was a fellow PhD student. It was on a road with a 30mph limit but where people regularly speed to 50+mph. He was an international student from Vietnam. His family woke up one day, got a phone call, and learned he was killed. I guess there was nobody to press charges. She never faced any accountability for the 'accident'. She gets to liv…

I'm sorry for your loss.

> Her name even seems to have been scrubbed from most of the articles about her killing my friend.

I'm somewhat surprised there were even articles? Are road fatalities uncommon enough in the US that everyone gets written up? Or was this a special enough one?

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#498

Post by tovej »

kuboble wrote: post #493
tovej wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the idea that you "could not think about implementing a feature". I can think of roughly 0 fratures of run-of-the-mill software that would be impossible to implement for a semi-competent software developer. Especially for the kinds of applications you mention. Also it sounds less like you're productive and more like the vibeslop projects are distracting you.

I'm claiming it's both. I produce more good (imo) production features despite being distracted. The features I mention is something that I would be able to do, but only with a lot of learning and great effort - so in practical terms I would not. It is probably a skill issue but in the past many times I downloaded the open source project and just couldn't build and run it. Cryptic build errors, figuring out dependenci…

Out of interest, could you give me an example of a feature that it one-shotted that would have taken you a whole day?

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#499

Post by ljm »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #430
pibaker wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a class of YouTube "content creators" who like to point out "cringe" individuals on the internet online for others to laugh at. They will often add a disclaimer to their videos saying "hey please don't go and harass this person, pinky promise!" But it never works. A hoard of internet randos will descend on the individual to say the most nasty words. When the YouTuber is pressed he or she will just say "I wou…

But in this case, isn't Rathbun's owner the YouTube guy in this scenario? I totally understand why they're trying to stay anonymous; it's a very rational thing to do, because people will shit on them. But they or their creation is the one that started trying to play the name-and-shame game. It's hard to stir up too many feelings of sympathy here.

Exactly. I'm not saying this person should disclose their identity, but they are very conveniently using anonymity and passive voice to make themselves unaccountable to the 'social experiment' they conducted. And that we all know that if it went differently they'd put their name all over it.

In as many words I'm just calling this person a complete asshole and if I were to ever know this person offline I would be quite clear in explaining that.

Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

#500

Post by cyanydeez »

SilverBirch wrote: post #303

I think the big take away here isn't about misalignment or jail breaking. The entire way this bot behaved is consistent with it just being run by some asshole from Twitter. And we need to understand it doesn't matter how careful you think you need to be with AI, because some asshole from Twitter doesn't care, and they'll do literally whatever comes into their mind. And it'll go wrong. And they won't apologize. They w…

Its like we never thoughr about trolls.

Rose colored capitqlism at work.

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