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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

#711

Post by codyb »

famouswaffles wrote: post #233
MisterTea wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like the most likely scenario. Especially since the meat bag behind the original AI PR responded with "Now with 100% more meat" meaning they were behind the original PR in the first place. It's obvious they got miffed at their PR being rejected and decided to do a little role playing to vent their unjustified anger.

>It's obvious they got miffed at their PR being rejected and decided to do a little role playing to vent their unjustified anger. In that case, apologizing almost immediately after seems strange. EDIT: >Especially since the meat bag behind the original AI PR responded with "Now with 100% more meat" This person was not the original 'meat bag' behind the original AI.

Really? I'd think a human being would be more likely to recognize they'd crossed a boundary with another human, step back, and address the issue with some reflection?

If apologizing is more likely the response of an AI agent than a human that's either... somewhat hopeful in one sense, and supremely disappointing in another.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#712

Post by teaearlgraycold »

hunterpayne wrote: post #703
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of shocking the OP does not consider this, the most likely scenario. Human uses AI to make a PR. PR is rejected. Human feels insecure - this tool that they thought made them as good as any developer does not. They lash out and instruct an AI to build a narrative and draft a blog post. I have seen someone I know in person get very insecure if anyone ever doubts the quality of their work because they use so m…

Somehow, that's even worse...

LLMs give people leverage. Including mentally ill people. Or just plain assholes.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#713

Post by stateofinquiry »

socalgal2 wrote: post #331
japhyr wrote: post #149

Wow, there are some interesting things going on here. I appreciate Scott for the way he handled the conflict in the original PR thread, and the larger conversation happening around this incident. > This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats. This was a really concrete case to discuss,…

Do we just need a few expensive cases of libel so solve this?

Probably. Question is, who will be accountable for the bot behavior? Might be the company providing them, might be the user who sent them off unsupervised, maybe both. The worrying thing for many of us humans is not that a personal attack appeared in a blog post (we have that all the time!) its that it was authored and published by an entity that might be unaccountable. This must change.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#714

Post by hunterpayne »

monocularvision wrote: post #341
amatecha wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google literally just settled for $68m about this very issue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-pr... > Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy. Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...

“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.

The money is the admission of guilt in modern parlance.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#717

Post by donkeybeer »

lp0_on_fire wrote: post #553
mrguyorama wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You've got nothing to worry about. These are machines. Stop. Point blank. Ones and Zeros derived out of some current in a rock. Tools. They are not alive. They may look like they do but they don't "think" and they don't "suffer". No more than my toaster suffers because I use it to toast bagels and not slices of bread. The people who boost claims of "artificial" intelligence are selling a bill of goods designed to hit…

What are humans? What is in humans other than just molecules and electrical signals?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#718

Post by themanmaran »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #662
themanmaran wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github doesn't show timestamps in the UI, but they do in the HTML. Looking at the timeline, I doubt it was really autonomous. More likely just a person prompting the agent for fun. > @scottshambaugh's comment [1]: Feb 10, 2026, 4:33 PM PST > @crabby-rathbun's comment [2]: Feb 10, 2026, 9:23 PM PST If it was really an autonomous agent it wouldn't have taken five hours to type a message and post a blog. Would have been…

> Github doesn't show timestamps in the UI, but they do in the HTML. Unrelated tip for you: `title` attributes are generally shown as a mouseover tooltip, which is the case here. It's a very common practice to put the precise timestamp on any relative time in a title attribute, not just on Github.

Oh nice. Yea I was annoyed it didn't show the actual timestamp. But suppose I didn't hover long enough.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#719

Post by ares623 »

hxugufjfjf wrote: post #516
trollbridge wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI actually has hit the levels that Sequoia, Anthropic, et al claim it has, then autonomous AI agents should be forking projects and making them so much better that we'd all be using their vastly improved forks. Why isn't this happening?

I do this all the time. I just keep them to myself. Nobody wants my AI slop fork even if it fixes the issues of the original.

Do you think you'd ever feel confident enough to submit non-slop patches in the future? I feel like that way, at least the project gains a potential maintainer.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me

#720

Post by hxugufjfjf »

ares623 wrote: post #719
hxugufjfjf wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this all the time. I just keep them to myself. Nobody wants my AI slop fork even if it fixes the issues of the original.

Do you think you'd ever feel confident enough to submit non-slop patches in the future? I feel like that way, at least the project gains a potential maintainer.

I already do that, but only on projects where I actually wrote the code. I don’t see a future where I would submit something AI fully wrote even if I understood it.
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