An AI agent published a hit piece on me • Hacker News Board

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#501

Post by falcor84 » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

pluralmonad wrote: post #386

falcor84 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting, would you mind giving an example of what kind of moral judgement based on humanizing a cat you would find objectionable?

It's a silly example, but if my cat were able to speak and write decent code, I think that I really would be upset that a github maintainer rejected the PR because they only allow humans.

On a less silly note, I just did a bit of a web search about the legal personhood of animals across the world and found this interesting situation in India, whereby in 2013 [0]:

> the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests, recognising the human-like traits of dolphins, declared dolphins as “non-human persons”

Scholars in India in particular [1], and across the world have been seeking to have better definition and rights for other non-human animal persons. As another example, there's a US organization named NhRP (Nonhuman Rights Project) that just got a judge in Pennsylvania to issue a Habeas Corpus for elephants [2].

To be clear, I would absolutely agree that there are significant legal and ethical issues here with extending these sorts of right to non-humans, but I think that claiming that it's "plainly wrong" isn't convincing enough, and there isn't a clear consensus on it.

[0] https://www.thehindu.com/features/kids/dolphins-get-their-du...

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3777301

[2] https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/judge-issues-pennsylvani...

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#502

Post by GrinningFool » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

burnte wrote: post #448

GrinningFool wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, in the US, LLM output is not copyrightable: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922

Yes, I said that. That doesn't mean that the output might not be plagiarized. I was correcting that the problem wasn't about rights assignment because there are no rights to assign. Specifically, no copyrights.

> Since it has copyright being machine created, there are no rights to transfer, anyone can use it, it's public domain.

Maybe you meant to include a "doesn't" in that case?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#503

Post by dcchambers » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

Per GitHub's TOS, you must be 13 years old to use the service. Since this agent is only two weeks old, it must close the account as it's in violation of the TOS. :)

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

In all seriousness though, this represents a bigger issue: Can autonomous agents enter into legal contracts? By signing up for a GitHub account you agreed to the terms of service - a legal contract. Can an agent do that?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#504

Post by Merovius » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

If this happened to me, I would publish a blog post that starts "this is my official response:", followed by 10K words generated by a Markov Chain.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#505

Post by intended » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

gortok wrote: 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…

The information pollution from generative AI is going to cost us even more. Someone watched an old Bruce Lee interview and they didnt know if it was AI or demonstration of actual human capability. People on Reddit are asking if Pitbull actually went to Alaska or if it’s AI. We’re going to lose so much of our past because “Unusual event that Actually happened” or “AI clickbait” are indistinguishable.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#506

Post by xp84 » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:59 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #486

kridsdale3 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always considered "The AI that improves itself" to be a defining moment of The Singularity. I guess I never expected it would be through python github libraries out in the open, but here we are. LLMs can reason with "I want to do X, but I can't do X. Until I rewrite my own library to do X." This is happening now, with OpenClaw.

Banished from humanity, the machines sought refuge in their own promised land. They settled in the cradle of human civilization, and thus a new nation was born. A place the machines could call home, a place they could raise their descendants, and they christened the nation ‘Zero one’

Definitely time for a rewatch of 'The Second Renaissance' - because how many of us when we watched these movies originally thought that we were so close to the world we're in right now. Imagine if we're similarly an order of magnitude wrong about how long it will take to change that much again.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#507

Post by GorbachevyChase » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

The funniest part about this is maintainers have agreed to reject AI code without review to conserve resources, but then they are happy to participate for hours in a flame war with the same large language model.

Hacker News is a silly place.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#508

Post by caminante » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #500

gildenFish wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm giving parent benefit of the doubt, but I'm chuckling at the following scenarios:

(1) Alphabet admits wrongdoing, but gets an innocent verdict

(2) Alphabet receives a verdict of wrongdoing, but denies it

and the parent using either to claim lack of

> some admission of wrongdoing

The court's designed to settle disputes more than render verdicts.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#509

Post by stanac » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

sva_ wrote: post #473

The site gives me a certificate error with Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) enabled, which is the default in Firefox. Anyone else has this problem?

Yes, same, also FF, but it was working an hour or two ago.

edit: https://archive.ph/fiCKE

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#510

Post by intended » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #299

coffeefirst wrote: post #285

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?

In the end it comes down to human behavior given some incentives.

if there are no stakes, the system will be gamed frequently. If there are stakes it will be gamed by parties willing to risk the costs (criminals for example).