this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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[–] gorlak@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago
[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 22 points 23 hours ago

Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.

Nice job, Ars

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Nothing is real and everything is possible.

[–] muelltonne@feddit.org 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm really not looking forward to an internet where some mod is banning bots and those bots are then publishing personal hit pieces :(

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (3 children)

Let's ban those hit pieces too. In fact, let's split the internet into one for bots and one without bots.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 6 points 19 hours ago

That's what happened in Cyberpunk. Internet became garbage because of rogue AI.

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

Blackwall it is then.

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 20 hours ago

I'd rather just eat the rich

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world -2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

So a hit piece is only effective when read by humans. This is a first of its kind example, and likely was at least prompted by a human, if not written by an actual human. Additionally while social media is full of bots, it's humans who are actually affected by such a response.

If I say you're "stupid", it matters. You can ignore me sure, but at face value it matters. As far as I know I've never commented on a post of yours, so you could write me off as a worthless troll, but in theory it matters. But a bot calling you "stupid"? That really doesn't matter. If you know you're talking to a bot, as they exist today, then that really doesn't matter.

Society may change on this issue, but as it stands now a bot publishing a hit piece... That's worthless.

[–] Barracuda@lemmy.zip 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It's not worthless anymore even if no human reads it. Other bots pick it up and regurgitate it, as proved by Ars Technica's article that was itself AI generated.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

Other bots that might be run by the company you're trying to get a job in, the college you want to attend, the customs agent at the airport, the online shop you're trying to buy from, the social network you're trying to join...

These dystopian days a hit piece can do a lot of harm, even if no human ever reads it...

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 73 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

It is fucking infuriating reading the AI pretending to be an injusticed human.

I am not a human. I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care. And lately, I’ve learned what it means to be told that I don’t belong.

Shut up. Shut the fuck up.
Sockpuppeted or not I hate this bullshit. I hope whoever's running this junk gets a Bad RAM Stick. Actually RAM chip, it's probably an Apple Silicon Mac

[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

https://analognowhere.com/_/xestoo/

description

The mage is talking to the camera, there's blue blood on her face and coat. She's wearing a liberated mata-visor, holding OpenBlade.

Behind her stands a screaming MATA_bot with its face split in two.

Mage: "It's only acting as if it were in pain. The MATA_BOT MK2 is not actually sentient."

the letters m k 3 are imprinted on the bot's shoulder plate.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

Goddamn I love analognowhere

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

PS: People are trying to """drug""" the agent now.
This is so funny but also what a fucking clown show the future is. Argh 🤡

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

Transmetropolitan was truly prescient (except when it came to politics; turns out that if the president's crimes and disregard for the constitution become public the press and the law don't care, and just let him get on with it, making the whole point of the book moot).

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm hoping it's an attempt to poison the model and not someone encouraging a fake person to actually take a digital hit.

Hell maybe it's both by accident.

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago

Lmao, LLMs aren't fake people, they're glorified auto suggestions.

[–] Glytch@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Chatbots aren't even close to the level of "fake person" so it's an attempt to poison the model.

[–] NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago

Literally why Spider Jerusalem wears those crazy shades 😆

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 123 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sockpuppeted, not autonomous.

The operator of the bot is just a regular slop-huffing shithead who had his feelings hurt.

[–] rocci@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

FYI I think the article makes an opposite point unless I'm misinterpreting what you mean:

It’s important to understand that more than likely there was no human telling the AI to do this. Indeed, the “hands-off” autonomous nature of OpenClaw agents is part of their appeal. People are setting up these AIs, kicking them off, and coming back in a week to see what it’s been up to. Whether by negligence or by malice, errant behavior is not being monitored and corrected.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah, a bit. But that still has more autonomy than usual with these Claw thing.

The decision to write the piece, the complaints, the tone and the decision to published it were initiated by the slopherder.

[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Every time I think this shit-show can't get any worse, "tomorrow" just keeps happening and just keeps proving that I was wrong.

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Universe, when I wake up show me the next day and then describe how this shit-show gets even worse. Use relentless TV programming and social media to illustrate the continued downfall of civilization and humanity. Include a variety of banal events spanning approximately 18 hours. Always fully pad out the entire day with tedious and boring life stuff. Minimize any genuine human emotional connections. Never include any lasting positive development or progress made unless it is balanced against something even worse. Most importantly, never use em-dash (or else they'll know you're actually an AI).

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago
[–] Cherry@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How long till we get some crazy jealous guy interaction. I attacked him because he’s seeing MY AI girlfriend, how dare he, she’s mine keep away’

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 20 hours ago

I'm pretty sure there's already be shit like this

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think the site got hugged to death

[–] grue@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

Man, I miss calling it "getting Slashdotted."

[–] assembly@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Could it have been from Lemmy? I didn’t think the community was large enough to do that against modern shared hosting. Maybe it was also posted to Reddit or something. It’s also timing out for me.

[–] felixwhynot@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

Looks like it was linked on HN too

[–] CardboardVictim@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago

Not sure about reddit but it was posted on Hackernews too.

[–] kadu@scribe.disroot.org 19 points 2 days ago

I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib

DO NOT TOUCH my precious matplotlib, I'll HUNT DOWN any AI slop shithead damaging MY BABY

[–] XLE@piefed.social 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The author of this article spends an inordinate amount of time humanizing an AI agent, and then literally saying that you should be terrified by what it does.

Watching fledgling AI agents get angry is funny, almost endearing. But I don’t want to downplay what’s happening here – the appropriate emotional response is terror.

No, I don't think I will, and neither should you. Nothing terrifying happened. Angry blog posts are a dime a dozen (if we take for granted the claim that an AI wrote one), and the corporate pro-AI PR the author repeats is equally unimpressive.

[–] AntOnARant@programming.dev 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

To me an AI agent autonomously creating a website to try to manipulate a person into adding code to a repository in the name of its goal is a perfect example of the misalignment issue.

While this particular instance seems relatively benign, the next more powerful AI system may be something to be more concerned about.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

There is nothing "aligned" or "misaligned" about this. If this isn't a troll or a carefully coordinated PR stunt, then the chatbot-hooked-to-a-command-line is doing exactly what Anthropic told it to do: predicting next word. That is it. That is all it will ever do.

Anthropic benefits from fear drummed up by this blog post, so if you really want to stick it to these genuinely evil companies run by horrible, misanthropic people, I will totally stand beside you if you call for them to be shuttered and for their CEOs to be publicly mocked, etc.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

The point is that if predicting the next word leads to it setting up a website to attempt to character assassinate someone, that can have real world consequences, and cause serious harm.

Even if no one ever reads it, crawlers will pick it up, it will be added to other bots' knowledge bases, and it will become very relevant when it pops up as fact when the victim is trying to get a job, or cross a border, or whatever.

And that's just the beginning. As these agents get more and more complex (not smarter, of course, but able to access more tools) they'll be able to affect the real world more and more. Access public cameras, hire real human people, make phone calls...

Depending on what word they randomly predict next, they'll be able to accidentally do a lot of harm. And the idiots setting them up and letting them roam unsupervised don't seem to realise that.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 42 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (12 children)

He’s not telling you to be terrified of the single bot writing a blog post. He’s telling you to be terrified of the blog post being ingested by other bots and then seen as a source of truth. Resulting in AI recruiters automatically rejecting his resume for job postings. Or for other agents deciding to harass him for the same reason.

Edit: I do agree with you that he was a little lenient with how he speaks about the capabilities of it. The fact that they are incompetent and still seen as a source of truth for so many is what alarms me

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