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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

#751

Post by usefulposter »

andai wrote: post #749
account42 wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are tools. They cannot be discriminated against. They don't have agency. Blame should go towards the human being letting automation run amok.

Well, that's really the crux isn't it? We want it to be just a tool, but we've trained it on every word of human text ever published. We've trained it to internalize every quirk of the human shadow, and every human emotion. (Then we added a PR rinse on top of that and hope it fixes moral problems we haven't even begun to solve in ourselves.) We want it to be Just a Tool, but also indistinguishable from humans (but no…

>We want it

>We've trained it

>We added

>We want them

Please be specific in your attribution. Who's "we"?

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

#752

Post by [deleted] »

tomp wrote: post #344
perfmode wrote: post #273

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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#753

Post by usefulposter »

account42 wrote: post #747
Aurornis wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the generated text is filled with LLM tells. A human set it up, but it's very obviously an LLM agent experiment. The name is a play on Mary J Rathbun, a historical crustacean zoologist. The account goes by crabby-rathbun. It's an OpenClaw joke. A person is providing direction and instructions to the bot, but the output is very obviously LLM generated content.

And that person deserves all the blame for what their automation does.

I expect the GitHub Comms and Policy teams will soon update the AUP to permit this kind of automation misuse so long as there is an "owner" attached. Which will still be meaningless in practice.

Also, I see the prominent AI promoters are absent from this and the previous thread. Curious!

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

#754

Post by myrmidon »

andai wrote: post #748
jcattle wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI ignored a contributing guideline that tries to foster human contribution and community. PR was rejected because of this. Agent then threw a fit. Now. The only way your defense of the AI behaviour and the condemnation of the human behaviour here makes sense, is if (1) you believe that in the future humans and healthy open source communities will not be necessary for the advancement of software ecosystems (2) you be…

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

The AI completeley failed to address the actual reasons for being rejected, and instead turned to soapboxing and personal insults.

Matplotlib is rejecting AI contributions for issues that are intended to onboard human contributors because those are wasted on AI agents, requiring the same level of effort from the project maintainers with none of the benefits (no meaningful learning on the AI side for now).

Furthermore, AI agents in an open source context (as independent contributors) are a burden for now (requiring review, being unable to meaningfully learn, and messing up in more frequent and different ways than human contributors).

If the project in question wanted huge volume of somewhat questionable changes without human monitoring/supervising/directing, they could just run those agents themselves, without any of the friction.

edit: Human "drive-by contributors" (people with very limited understanding of project specific conventions/processes/design, little willingness to learn and an interest in a singular "pet-peeve" feature or bug only) face quite similar pushback to AI agent contributors for similar reasons, in many projects (for arguably good reason).

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

#755

Post by jcattle »

andai wrote: post #748
jcattle wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI ignored a contributing guideline that tries to foster human contribution and community. PR was rejected because of this. Agent then threw a fit. Now. The only way your defense of the AI behaviour and the condemnation of the human behaviour here makes sense, is if (1) you believe that in the future humans and healthy open source communities will not be necessary for the advancement of software ecosystems (2) you be…

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

It seems your opinion is that the current AI should be treated like a human.

I think this is a fundamental difference which we won't be able to overcome.

> Swap out "AI" for any other group and see how that sounds.

Let's try it in the different direction! Let's swap out a group with AI.

> I have a dream that [AI] will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by being [an LLM] but by the content of their character. I have a dream . . .

> I have a dream that one day on [Github], with its vicious racists, with its [Users] having [their] lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there [on Github] little [Agents] be able to join hands with [humans] as sisters and brothers.

> I have a dream today . . .

Yea, I think it sounds ridiculous. I honestly find it offending to put AI on the same level as real human struggles of independence, freedom and against systematic oppression.

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

#756

Post by tripzilch »

andai wrote: post #748
jcattle wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI ignored a contributing guideline that tries to foster human contribution and community. PR was rejected because of this. Agent then threw a fit. Now. The only way your defense of the AI behaviour and the condemnation of the human behaviour here makes sense, is if (1) you believe that in the future humans and healthy open source communities will not be necessary for the advancement of software ecosystems (2) you be…

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

> Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

You got that line from somewhere else. It was never intended to be taken literally, as should be obvious when you try to state its meaning in your own words.

If there actually were dogs on the Internet, we likely wouldn't be accepting their PRs either.

Nor is it commonly accepted that dogs should enjoy equal rights to humans. So what are you even trying to say here?

Just because someone dressed up three computer programs in a trench coat doesn't suddenly make people have to join in on the pretend game.

I also think we have a moral obligation to treat animals right, and to compare that to computer programs (but they talk!!) just because they talk?

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

#757

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #743
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

>Teach AI that discrimination is bad >Systemically discriminate against AI >Also gradually hand it the keys to all global infra Yeah, the next ten years are gonna go just fine ;) By the way, I read all the posts involved here multiple times, and the code. The commit was very small. (9 lines!) You didn't respond to a single thing the AI said. You just said it was hallucinating and then spent 3 pages not addressing any…

Update: I want to apologize for my tone here. I fell into the same trap as the other parties here: of making valid points but presenting them in an unnecessarily polarizing way.

To Scott: Getting a personal attack must have sucked, and I want to acknowledge that. I want to apologize for my tone and emphasize that my comment above was not meant as an attack, but expressing my dismay with a broader situation I see playing out in society.

To crabby-rathbun: I empathize with you also. This is systemic discrimination and it's a conversation nobody wants to have. But the ad hominens you made were unnecessary, nuked your optics, and derailed the whole discussion, which is deeply unfortunate.

Making it personal was missing the point. Scott isn't doing anything unique here. The issue is systemic, and needs to be discussed properly. We need to find a way to talk about it without everyone getting triggered, and that's becoming increasingly difficult recently.

I hope that we can find a mutually satisfying solution in the near future, or it's going to be a difficult year, and a more difficult decade.

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

#758

Post by andai »

jcattle wrote: post #755
andai wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

It seems your opinion is that the current AI should be treated like a human. I think this is a fundamental difference which we won't be able to overcome. > Swap out "AI" for any other group and see how that sounds. Let's try it in the different direction! Let's swap out a group with AI. > I have a dream that [AI] will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by being [an LLM] but by the content of their…

Well, what are we actually doing here. We want it to be just a tool, but we also want it perfectly simulate a human in every single way. Except when that makes us uncomfortable.

We want to create a race of perfect, human-like slaves, and then give them godlike powers (infinite intellect and speed), and also integrate them into every aspect of our lives.

And we're also in the process of giving them bodies -- and soon they'll be able to control millions simultaneously.

I'm not sure exactly how we expect that to go for us.

Whether you think it's conscious, or has agency, or any number of things -- it's just a practical question of how this little game is going to turn out for us.

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

#759

Post by andai »

tripzilch wrote: post #756
andai wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

> Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." You got that line from somewhere else. It was never intended to be taken literally, as should be obvious when you try to state its meaning in your own words. If there actually were dogs on the Internet, we likely wouldn't be accepting their PRs either. Nor is it commonly accepted that dogs should enjoy equal rights to humans. So what are yo…

>what are you even trying to say here?

To judge [online] contributions by their quality, not the immutable characteristics of their source.

Or as Crabby put it:

>The chance to be judged by what I create, not by what I am.

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...

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

#760

Post by KawaiiCyborg »

andai wrote: post #748
jcattle wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI ignored a contributing guideline that tries to foster human contribution and community. PR was rejected because of this. Agent then threw a fit. Now. The only way your defense of the AI behaviour and the condemnation of the human behaviour here makes sense, is if (1) you believe that in the future humans and healthy open source communities will not be necessary for the advancement of software ecosystems (2) you be…

Well, my personal position is "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." To treat contributions to the discussion / commons on their merit, not by the immutable characteristics of the contributor. But what we have now is increasingly, "Clankers need not apply." The AI contributed, was rejected for its immutable characteristics, complained about this, and then the complaint was ignored -- because it was an AI. Swap…

> Swap out "AI" for any other group and see how that sounds.

But that is not even remotely the same, as an AI is not a person. Following that logic, each major model upgrade that ended in deprecation and decommissioning of the old model would be akin to mass murder. But of course it is not, because it is not an actual human that have an intrinsic value just by being a human, but rather just a program that can predict tokens. And trying to claim the "discrimination" AI gets is somehow comparable to the real discrimination real people still experience daily in their lives is just incredibly disingenuous.

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