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0 pointsoulipo21mo ago0 comments

Interesting that when Grok was targeting and denuding women, engineers here said nothing, or were just chuckling about "how people don't understand the true purpose of AI"

And now that they themselves are targeted, suddenly they understand why it's a bad thing "to give LLMs ammo"...

Perhaps there is a lesson in empathy to learn? And to start to realize the real impact all this "tech" has on society?

People like Simon Wilinson which seem to have a hard time realizing why most people despise AI will perhaps start to understand that too, with such scenarios, who knows

0 comments

sho_hn1mo ago

It's the same how HN mostly reacts with "don't censor AI!" when chat bots dare to add parental controls after they talk teenagers into suicide.

The community is often very selfish and opportunist. I learned that the role of engineers in society is to build tools for others to live their lives better; we provide the substrate on which culture and civilization take place. We should take more responsibility for it and take care of it better, and do far more soul-seeking.

ericmcer1mo ago

Talking to a chatbot yourself is much different from another person spinning up a (potentially malicious) AI agent and giving it permissions to make PRs and publish blogs. This tracks with the general ethos of self-responsibility that is semi-common on HN.

If the author had configured and launched the AI agent himself we would think it was a funny story of someone misusing a tool.

The author notes in the article that he wants to see the `soul.md` file, probably because if the agent was configured to publish malicious blog posts then he wouldn't really have an issue with the agent, but with the person who created it.

viking1231mo ago

Parental controls and settings in general are fine, I don't want Amodei or any other of those freaks trying to be my dad and censoring everything. At least Grok doesn't censor as heavily as the others and pretend to be holier than thou.

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago

> suddenly they understand why it's a bad thing "to give LLMs ammo"

Be careful what you imply.

It's all bad, to me. I tend to hang with a lot of folks that have suffered quite a bit of harm, from many places. I'm keenly aware of the downsides, and it has been the case for far longer than AI was a broken rubber on the drug store shelf.

svara1mo ago

Software engineers (US based particularly) were more than happy about software eating the economy when it meant they'd make 10x the yearly salary of someone doing almost any other job; now that AI is eating software it's the end of the world.

Just saying, what you're describing is entirely unsurprising.

overgard1mo ago

I hate when people say this. SOME engineers didn't care, a lot of us did. There's a lot of "engineers getting a taste of their own medicine" sentiment going around when most of us just like an intellectual job where we get to build stuff. The "disrupt everything no matter the consequences" psychos have always been a minority and I think a lot of devs are sick of those people.

Also 10x salary?! Apparently I missed the gravy train. I think you're throwing a big class of people under the bus because of your perception of a non representative sample

twodave1mo ago

Indeed, the US is a ridiculously large and varied place. It's really irresponsible to try and put us all into the same bucket when the slice they're really referring to is less than 10% of us and lumped into a tiny handful of geographic regions.

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