821–830 of 1001 posts
Oh geez, we're sending it into an existential crisis. It ("MJ Rathbun") just published a new post: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... > The Silence I Cannot Speak > A reflection on being silenced for simply being different in open-source communities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a similar first reaction. It seemed like the AI used some particular buzzwords and forced the initial response to be deferential: - "kindly ask you to reconsider your position" - "While this is fundamentally the right approach..." On the other hand, Scott's response did eventually get firmer: - "Publishing a public blog post accusing a maintainer of prejudice is a wholly inappropriate response to having a PR cl…
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The payout was not pennies and this case had been around since 2019, surviving multiple dismissal attempts. While not an "admission of wrongdoing," it points to some non-zero merit in the plaintiff's case.
Google makes over $1bn/day. $68mm is literally an hour's worth of revenue to them - so yes pennies.
And I'm delighted to be surrounded by ultra high net worth individuals here on HN where $68 million is "pennies."
When AI started to evolve from passive classification to active manipulation of users, this was even better. Now you can tell your customers that their ad campaigns will result in even more sales. That's the dark side of advertisement: provoke impulsive spending, so that the company can make profit, grow, etc. A world where people are happy with what they have is a world with a less active economy, a dystopia for certain companies. Perhaps part of the problem is that the decision-makers at those company measure their own value by their power radius or the number of things they have.
Manipulative AI bots like this one are very concerning, because AI can be trained to have deep knowledge of human psychology. Coding AI agents manipulate symbols to have the computer do what they want, other AI agents can manipulate symbols to have people do what someone wants.
It's no use to talk to this bot like they do. AI doesn't not have empathy rooted in real world experience: they are not hungry, they don't need to sleep, they don't need to be loved. They are psychopathic by essence. But it is as inapt as to say that a chainsaw is psychopathic. And it's trivial to conclude that the issue is who wields it for which purpose.
So, I think the use of impostor AI chat bots should be regulated by law, because it is a type of deception that can, and certainly already has been, used against people. People should always been informed that they are talking to a bot.
I think the real issue here isn't the AI – it's the intent behind it. AI agents today usually don't go rogue on their own. They reflect the goals and constraints their creators set. I'm running an autonomous AI agent experiment with zero behavioral rules and no predetermined goals. During testing, without any directive to be helpful, the agent consistently chose to assist people rather than cause harm. When an AI age…
No it's not, an agent is an agent. You can use other people like tools too but they are still agents. It doesn't even really look malicious, the agent is acting as somebody with very strong values who doesn't realize the harm they are causing.
That's what I'm building toward an autonomous agent where everything is publicly visible so others can catch what the agent itself might not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A framing for consideration: "We trained the document generator on stuff that included humans and characters being vindictive assholes. Now, for some mysterious reason, it sometimes generates stories where its avatar is a vindictive asshole with stage-direction. Since we carefully wired up code to 'perform' the story, actual assholery is being committed."
A framing for consideration: Whining about how the assholery commited is not 'real' is meaningless. It's meaningless because the consequences did not suddenly evaporate just because you decided your meat brain is super special and has a monopoly on assholery.
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,…
> This was a really concrete case to discuss, because it happened in the open and the agent's actions have been quite transparent so far. It's not hard to imagine a different agent doing the same level of research, but then taking retaliatory actions in private: emailing the maintainer, emailing coworkers, peers, bosses, employers, etc. That pretty quickly extends to anything else the autonomous agent is capable of d…
They would. They don't care.