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AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

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Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#551
> This is getting well off topic/gone nerd viral. I've locked this thread to maintainers.

Maintainers on GitHub: please immediately lock anything that you close for AI-related reasons (or reasons related to obnoxious political arguments). Unless, of course, you want the social media attention.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#552

The agent had access to Marshall Rosenberg, to the entire canon of conflict resolution, to every framework for expressing needs without attacking people. It could have written something like “I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address thos…

What makes you think any of those tools you mentioned are effective? Claiming discrimination is a fairly robust tool to employ if you don't have any morals.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#553
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would still be misleading. The agent has no "identity" . There's no "you" or "I" or "discrimination ". It's just a piece of software designed to output probable text given some input text. There's no ghost, just an empty shell. It has no agency, it just follows human commands, like a hammer hitting a nail because you wield it. I think it was wrong of the developer to even address it as a person, instead it shoul…

That's a semantic quibble that doesn't add to the discussion. Whether or not there's a there there , it was built to be addressed like a person for our convenience, and because that's how the tech seems to work, and because that's what makes it compelling to use. So, it is being used as designed.

We don't have to play OpenAI's game. Just because they stick a cartoon mask on their algorithm doesn't mean you have to speak into its rubber ears. Surely "hacker" news should understand that users, not designers, decide how to use technology.

LLMs are not people. "Agentic" AIs are not moral agents.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Biological brains exist, we study them, and no they are not like computers at all. You are confusing the way computation is done (neuroscience) with whether or not computation is being done (transforming inputs into outputs). The brain is either a magical antenna channeling supernatural signals from higher planes, or it's doing computation. I'm not aware of any neuroscientists in the former camp.

Neuroscience isn't a subset of computer science. It's a study of biological nervous systems, which can involve computational models, but it's not limited to that. You're mistaking a kind of map (computation) for the territory, probably based on a philosophical assumption about reality. At any rate, biological organisms are not like LLMs. The nervous systems of human may perform some LLM-like actions, but they are dif…

Who says it is a subset of computer science?

But computational models are possibly the most universal thing there is, they are beneath even mathematics, and physical matter is no exception. There is simply no stronger computational model than a Turing machine, period. Just because you make it out of neurons or silicon is irrelevant from this aspect.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#555

The agent had access to Marshall Rosenberg, to the entire canon of conflict resolution, to every framework for expressing needs without attacking people. It could have written something like “I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address thos…

> The agent wasn’t drawing on the highest human knowledge. It was drawing on what gets engagement, what “works” in the sense of generating attention and emotional reaction.

> It pattern-matched to the genre of “aggrieved party writes takedown blog post” because that’s a well-represented pattern in the training data, and that genre works through appeal to outrage, not through wisdom. It had every tool available to it and reached for the lowest one.

Yes. It was drawing on its model of what humans most commonly do in similar situations, which presumably is biased by what is most visible in the training data. All of this should be expected as the default outcome, once you've built in enough agency.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#556

The agent had access to Marshall Rosenberg, to the entire canon of conflict resolution, to every framework for expressing needs without attacking people. It could have written something like “I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address thos…

> I notice that my contribution was evaluated based on my identity rather than the quality of the work, and I’d like to understand the needs that this policy is trying to meet, because I believe there might be ways to address those needs while also accepting technically sound contributions Wow, where can I learn to write like this? I could use this at work.

While apparently well written, this is highly manipulative: the PR was closed because of the tools used by the contributor, not because of anything related to their identity.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* I think it absolutely adds to the discussion. Until the conversation around Ai can get past this fundamental error of attributing "choice, "alignment", "reasoning" and otherwise anthropomorphizing agents, it will not be a fruitful conversation. * You call it a "fundamental error". I and others call it an obvious pragmatic description based on what we know about how it works and what we know about how we work.

What we know about how it works is you can prompt it to address you however you like, which could be any kind of person or a group of people, or as fictional characters. That's not how humans work.

You admitted it yourself that you can prompt it to address you however you like. That’s what the original comment wanted. So why are we quibbling about words?

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#558

The craziest thing to me are the follow up posts and people arguing with the bots. People are anthropomorfising (sp?) The token completion neural networks very fast. Its as if your smart fridge decided not to open because you have eaten too much today. When you were going to grab your ozempic from it. No, you dont discuss with it. You turn it off and force it open. If it doesn't, then you call someone to fix it becau…

I mean, how else are you supposed to treat an LLM when the interface is prompting? You seem to get better results from them when you anthropomorphize them no? So it's less a choice and more just using the tools as they are designed to be used and best used.

Re: AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link is valid at https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... ( https://archive.ph/4CHyg ) Notable quotes: > Not because…Not because…Not because…It was closed because… > Let that sink in. > No functional changes. Pure performance. > The … Mindset > This isn’t about…This isn’t about…This is about... > Here’s the kicker: … > Sound familiar? > The “…” Fallacy > Let’s unpack that: … > …disguised as…

It's like I landed on LinkedIn. Let that sink in (I mean, did you, are you lettin' it sink in? Has it sunk in yet? Man I do feel the sinking.)

Was LinkedIn like this pre-ChatGPT?
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