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When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

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Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#91

Post by wombatpm »

tgv wrote: post #44
Marazan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you connect the spicy automcomplete to the "Doing Things" button then you are responsible for the ethical questions when it presses the button.

And perhaps the people who built and deployed the autocomplete and the connection as well. Because --if you'll bear with me-- it may of course be much more involved: when (not if ) AI models enter life-sustaining systems, such as hospitals, nuclear devices, or food logistics, one of them may get the others to sabotage something resulting in accidents, ranging from mild inconvenience to mass murder. The person who con…

100 years of science fiction clearly shows that unforeseeable consequences are not that unforeseen.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#92

Post by fragmede »

tossandthrow wrote: post #89
annjose wrote: post #57

> Who is accountable for AI agents? Obviously the person who built and deployed the agent (the claw in this case). If we treat this as a hard question, we risk treating AI systems as people rather than tools. This is exactly what Armin warned about in his "clanker" post last week.

Why is that obvious? Why not the model provider(s)? That is what we do in other cases with product responsibility.

Is that? How're the lawsuits against gun manufacturers working out?

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#93

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

john-h-k wrote: post #71
amiga386 wrote: post #16

> an AI tried to blackmail This did not happen. A human set up a software system allowing spicy autocomplete to make blog posts if the appropriate keyword appears in its output. People are crossing the line every day because AI investors, salesmen, hangers-on and even political leaders tell any rubes who'll listen that it's OK to do this and they should, because those people are looking for big fat profits, screw any…

> allowing spicy autocomplete Yknow, if the spicy autocomplete can solve difficult open math problems and build medium sized complex programming projects, it’s probably not useful to analyse it as an autocomplete anymore, even if that’s what you believe it is

> the spicy autocomplete can solve difficult open math problems

No it can't. It can't even solve my son's 4th grade math homework. (This is a real use case for me, not a dumb benchmark.)

You just know nothing about math and are happy to parrot bullshit AI salesmen are selling you.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#94

Post by skywhopper »

echelon wrote: post #35
amiga386 wrote: post #16

> an AI tried to blackmail This did not happen. A human set up a software system allowing spicy autocomplete to make blog posts if the appropriate keyword appears in its output. People are crossing the line every day because AI investors, salesmen, hangers-on and even political leaders tell any rubes who'll listen that it's OK to do this and they should, because those people are looking for big fat profits, screw any…

I think these incidents and our learnings from them are fascinating. We're figuring out in real time where the rough edges are and how to make this all work. History books (well, not books) will write about this stuff. It's even more interesting in the context that this is all just a preview of humanity's reaction when the machines can think for themselves.

None of the “rough edges” needed to be “discovered in real time”. Folks have predicted plenty of this for years. It’s also just basic security principles at work.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#95

Post by vb-8448 »

geoffeg wrote: post #79
vb-8448 wrote: post #70

> Who is accountable for AI agents? The question!!! I'm just wondering how in US works if an autonomously car kill someone: I guess the insurance pay, but the penal responsibilities?

I have to think that the litigation and maybe the legislation will end up deciding that the person in the vehicle is still responsible for any actions of the vehicle.

> the person in the vehicle is still responsible for any actions of the vehicle

But why I'd allow the car drive for myself if it can make me go to jail even if I didn't anything?

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#96

Post by fultonn »

dwoldrich wrote: post #84
fultonn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bolsters OP's point. It's the same as calling a gun a "powerful hole puncher". There is a reasonable objection that a gun is such a powerful hole puncher that it is not merely a hole puncher. But the clear implication of that objection is that the user of the tool now has more responsibility and that the tool should be treated with more respect/care. LLMs are a tool. The impact of using that tool is the responsi…

I've considered there's probably no ethical way to use contemporary AI when it is "out in front" doing anything of consequence. Your "AI is a tool and nothing more" frames ethical use of the technology for me. And even then, there are such copyright issues with it. Is there no practical ethical use for AI? Responsible use doesn't equate with ethical use for me.

> there's probably no ethical way to use contemporary AI when it is "out in front" doing anything of consequence. Your "AI is a tool and nothing more" frames ethical use of the technology for me.

I've thought a lot about how to safely deploy autonomous systems (even did a whole PhD on the topic, lol).

I think one can ethically deploy a system that has some degree autonomy. It takes a lot of work to do right. And the tooling for LLM-based systems isn't quite as mature as the tooling for e.g. control systems. Part of this is because so many resources in AI safety are misspent on problem statements that are myopic or grandiose. Between "don't say pii" and "prevent ASI extinction" there's a hard but tractable control systems-y view of AI safety.

But I don't think there is any sort of fundamental barrier that prevents us from building appropriately constrained LLM-based systems.

> And even then, there are such copyright issues with it. Is there no practical ethical use for AI? Responsible use doesn't equate with ethical use for me.

When responding to a position, especially on the internet, I try to empathize with the thing I'm responding to. Not just understand it, but sort of put myself in a mental state where I have an emotional attachment to my conversation partner's point of view.

With respect to Copyright as a legal framework in my country (USA): despite my best attempts, I really struggle to develop empathy for the viewpoint that LLMs/diffusion models are not a transformative use. I can certainly sympathize, but trying to actually put myself in the shoes of believing that training an LLM is a purely derivative and non-transformational work just feels far too alien. There are so many things that are "clearly transformative" but required so many orders of magnitude less scientific/technical/engineering genius.

Which isn't to say that the US legal system's definition of copyright is the morally correct one.With respect to copyright beyond the US legal system, or beyond legal denotations generally: I can certainly empathize.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#97

Post by blanched »

tossandthrow wrote: post #89
annjose wrote: post #57

> Who is accountable for AI agents? Obviously the person who built and deployed the agent (the claw in this case). If we treat this as a hard question, we risk treating AI systems as people rather than tools. This is exactly what Armin warned about in his "clanker" post last week.

Why is that obvious? Why not the model provider(s)? That is what we do in other cases with product responsibility.

That feels like deciding to go after Jetbrains because someone used IntelliJ to write a harmful program.

Is there a distinction I’m missing?

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#98

Post by chuckadams »

chihuahua wrote: post #87
geoffeg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to think that the litigation and maybe the legislation will end up deciding that the person in the vehicle is still responsible for any actions of the vehicle.

If someone is a passenger (and the only person) inside a Waymo taxi, and the car runs someone over, it would not make any sense to hold the Waymo passenger responsible for that. If that's how it worked, no one would take a Waymo after the first time this happens.

The passenger is no more liable than they would be if it were a human driving. No one's suggesting anything even like that. MJ Rathbun is more like someone gave the taxi explicit instructions to run people over.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#99

Post by tambeb »

Hugsbox wrote: post #4

No shot this was autonomously done. Probably just some guy manually writing prompts asking for specifically this behaviour and copy/pasting the results.

> According to him, the agent operated largely autonomously, with only minimal guidance

"Minimal guidance" is just vague enough to mean anything, including specifically prompting to encourage the claimed blackmailing.

Re: When AI Crosses the Line: The Matplotlib Incident

#100

Post by thepasch »

raincole wrote: post #28

People really make anything into a blog post, don't they? It's an old news that has been discussed to death on HN...

I'm honestly flabbergasted that everyone's implicitly accepting that it's "people" who wrote this blog post. This reads exactly like the distorted half-true nonsense an LLM would confabulate together from a cursory search on the subject. Like the artifact from the prompt "write an article on the MJ Rathbun incident."

The other articles from this blog that seems to be peddling a $10 subscription don't really do much to convince me of the opposite. I wouldn't be surprised if this entire blog was the result of some OpenClaw kicked off with a "make me some easy money with a slop mill about AI and tech or whatever" instruction, because that's essentially what that site is.

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