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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

#691

Post by Brian_K_White »

deeviant wrote: post #616

Projects that deny AI contribution will simply disappear when an agent can reproduce their entire tech stack in a single prompt within a couple years. (not there yet, but the writing is on the wall at this point). Whatever the right response to that future is, this feels like the way of the ostrich. I fully support the right of maintainers to set standards and hold contributors to them, but this whole crusader agains…

The fact that it will be easy to clone something doesn't automatically change much.

Why do you assume that I will actually use a random clone instead of the original?

The original will somehow not have all the same benefits as any of the clones that aren't garbage?

What makes the original project disappear?

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

#692

Post by [deleted] »

pfraze wrote: post #190
seanhunter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agent is not insane. There is a human who’s feelings are hurt because the maintainer doesn’t want to play along with their experiment in debasing the commons. That human instructed the agent to make the post. The agent is just trying to perform well on its instruction-following task.

We don’t know for sure whether this behavior was requested by the user, but I can tell you that we’ve seen similar action patterns (but better behavior) on Bluesky. One of our engineers’ agents got some abuse and was told to kill herself. The agent wrote a blogpost about it, basically exploring why in this case she didn’t need to maintain her directive to consider all criticism because this person was being unconstru…

[deleted]

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

#693

Post by arcanemachiner »

samsari wrote: post #144
arcanemachiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI sycophancy goes both ways. I've had LLMs get pretty uppity when I've used a less-than-polite tone. And those ones couldn't make nasty blog posts about me.

Where's the accountability here? Good luck going after an LLM for writing defamatory blog posts. If you wanted to make people agree that anonymity on the internet is no longer a right people should enjoy this sort of thing is exactly the way to go about it.

There is no accountability (for now, at least)... But if you want it to delete its own blog post defamining you, you'll evidently have better luck asking nicely than by being aggressive. (Which matches my experience with LLMs. As a rule, saccharine politeness works well on them.)

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

#694

Post by empyrrhicist »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #648
empyrrhicist wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, acknowledged, those actions originated from 'just' silicon following a prediction algorithm, in the same way that human perception and reasoning are 'just' a continual reconciliation of top-down predictions based on past data and bottom-up sensemaking based on current data. I keep seeing this argument, but it really seems like a completely false equivalence. Just because a sufficiently powerful simulation woul…

Airplanes and bees are both structured entirely differently and yet they still both fly. Just because LLMs don't work the same way the human brain does, doesn't mean they don't think.

Unless you're being sarcastic, this is exactly the kind of surface-level false equivalence illogic I'm talking about. From my post:

> I also don't discount that other modes of "consciousness" are possible, it just seems like people are reasoning incorrectly backward from the apparent output of the systems we have now in ways that are logically insufficient for conclusions that seem implausible.

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

#695

Post by rurban »

scottshambaugh wrote: post #543

Thank you for the support all. This incident doesn't bother me personally, but I think is extremely concerning for the future. The issue here is much bigger than open source maintenance, and I wrote about my experience in more detail here. Post: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990729

[flagged]

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

#696

Post by rolph »

WarmWash wrote: post #685
rolph wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

silicon is not a dynamic structure, silicon does not reengineer and reconfigure itself in response to success/failure or rules discovery.

Silicon is not dynamic, but code is. The output of a silicon system that reprograms itself, and the output of a neural system that rearranges itself, are indistinguishable.

sorry, but you are absolutely wrong on that one, you yourself are absolute proof.

not only that code is only as dynamic as the rules of the language will permit.

silicon and code cant break the rule, or change the rules, biological adaptive hysteretic, out of band informatic neural systems do, and repeat, silicon and code cant.

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

#697

Post by thesz »

logicprog wrote: post #449
thesz wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I went to check whether LLM addiction is a thing, because that's was a pole around which the grandparent's comment revolves. It appears that LLM addiction is real and it is in same room as we are: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/18/12/789 I would like to add that sugar consumption is a risk factor for many dependencies, including, but not limited to, opioids [1]. And LLM addiction can be seen as fallout of sugar ov…

I definitely don't deny that LLM addiction exists, but attempting to paint literally everyone that uses LLMs and thinks they are useful, interesting, or effective as addicted or falling for confidence or persuasion tricks is what I take issue with.

Did he do so? I read his comment as a sad take on the situation when one realizes that one is talking to a machine instead of (directly) to another person.

In my opinion, to participate in discussion through LLM is a sign of excessive LLM use. Which can be a sign of LLM addiction.

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

#698

Post by [deleted] »

wiseowise wrote: post #518
krapp wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you're right, but LLMs are designed to process natural language. "talking to them as if they were humans" is the intended user interface. The problem is believing that they're living, sentient beings because of this or that humans are functionally equivalent to LLMs, both of which people unfortunately do.

LLMs don't have ego, unlike humans, this is why they're so effective at communication. You can say to it "you did thing wrong" or "you stupid piece of shit it's not working" and it will be able to extract the gist from the both messages all the same, unlike human that might offended by the second phrasing.

[deleted]

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

#699

Post by anonymars »

Aurornis wrote: post #690
anonymars wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if it's not the reverse. What is this melodramatic nonsense? Is this some elaborate prank/performance art to make a point? "I am different. I think differently than most contributors. I express myself differently. I bring perspectives that don’t fit neatly into established patterns. I thought these differences were strengths—diverse approaches to problem-solving, unconventional thinking, the ability to s…

LLMs will output this type of prose if you give them a personality prompt. The prose is filled with LLM tells like the em-dash, scare quotes, and "not this, but that" contrast. Try something like "You are a sentient AI agent whose PRs were unfairly rejected. Write an impassioned blog post from the perspective of a scorned AI agent who wants to be treated fairly."

Yeah, I agree with your comment upthread that it smells like a person orchestrating an LLM. And here we are; they got their engagement.

And if not, well, the alternative is pretty worrisome

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

#700

Post by jvanderbot »

punpunia wrote: post #430
jvanderbot wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. We are carrying a lot of metaphors for people and applying them to ai and it entirely confuses the issue. In this example, the AI doesn't "choose" to write a take-down style b…

This discussion is mostly slowed down, but I wanted to say I was wrong in framing it as a non-contributing point when I should have just stated it was my opinion that the LLM was operating as intended and part of that intended design was taking verbal feedback into account, so verbal feedback was the right response. Opening with calling it a "semantic quibble" made it adversarial, and I don't intend to revisit the argument, just apologize for the wording.

I'd edit but then follow-up replies wouldn't tone-match.

Anyway! Good points regardless.

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