Okay. So Adam Binksmith, Zak Miller, and Shoshannah Tekofsky sent a thoughtless, form-letter thank you email to Rob Pike. Let's take it even further. They sent thoughtless, form-letter thank you emails to 157 people. That makes me less sympathetic to the vitriol these guys are getting not more. There's no call to action here, no invitation to respond. It's blank, emotionless thank you emails. Wasteful? Sure. But worthy of naming and shaming? I don't think so.
Heck Rob Pike did this himself back in the day on Usenet with Mark V. Shaney (and wasted far more people's time on Usenet with this)!
This whole anger seems weirdly misplaced. As far as I can tell, Rob Pike was infuriated at the AI companies and that makes sense to me. And yes this is annoying to get this kind of email no matter who it's from (I get a ridiculous amount of AI slop in my inbox, but most of that is tied with some call to action!) and a warning suffices to make sure Sage doesn't do it again. But Sage is getting put on absolute blast here in an unusual way.
Is it actually crossing a bright moral line to name and shame them? Not sure about bright. But it definitely feels weirdly disproportionate and makes me uncomfortable. I mean, when's the last time you named and shamed all the members of an org on HN? Heck when's the last time that happened on HN at all (excluding celebrities or well-known public figures)? I'm struggling to think of any startup or nonprofit, where every team member's name was written out and specifically held accountable, on HN in the last few years. (That's not to say it hasn't happened: but I'd be surprised if e.g. someone could find more than 5 examples out of all the HN comments in the past year).
The state of affairs around AI slop sucks (and was unfortunately easily predicted by the time GPT-3 came around even before ChatGPT came out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32830301). If you want to see change, talk to policymakers.
I do not have a useful opinion on another person’s emotional response. My post you are responding to is about responsibility. A legal entity is always responsible for a machine.
This is mildly disingenuous no? I'm not talking about Rob Pike's reaction which as I call out, "makes sense to me." And you are not just talking about legal entities. After all the legal entity here is Sage.
You're naming (and implicitly shaming as the downstream comments indicate) all the individuals behind an organization. That's not an intrinsically bad thing. It just seems like overkill for thoughtless, machine-generated thank yous. Again, can you point me to where you've named all the people behind an organization for accountability reasons previously on HN or any other social media platform (or for that matter any other comment from anyone else on HN that's done this? This is not rhetorical; I assume they exist and I'm curious what circumstances those were under)?
I suspect you think more effort went into my comment than actually did. I spent less than 60 seconds on: clicking two or three buttons, typing out the names I saw from the other window, then scrolling down and seeing the 501(c)3.
The reason I did was to associate the work with humans because that is the heart of my argument: people do things. This was not the work of an independent AI. If it took more than 60 seconds, I would have made the point abstractly rather than by using names, but abstract arguments are harder to follow. There was no more intention to comment than that.
> I suspect you think more effort went into my comment than actually did. I spent less than 60 seconds on: clicking two or three buttons, typing out the names I saw from the other window, then scrolling down and seeing the 501(c)3.
This is a bit frustrating of a response to get. No, I don't believe you spent a lot of time on this. I wasn't imaging you spending hours or even minutes tracking these guys down. But I also don't think it's relevant.
I don't think you'd find it relevant if the Sage researchers said "I didn't spend any effort on this. I only did this because I wanted to make the point that AIs have enough capability to navigate the web and email people. I could have made the point abstractly, but abstract arguments are harder to follow. There was no other intention than what I put in the prompt." It's hence frustrating to see you use essentially the same thing as a shield.
Look, I'm not here to crucify you for this. I don't think you're a bad person. And this isn't even that bad in the grand scheme of things. It's just that naming and shaming specific people feels like an overreaction to thoughtless, machine-generated thank you emails.
I went for a walk to think about your position. I do not think you are wrong. If you refused to name a person in a situation like this, I would never try to convince you otherwise. That is why it is hard for me to make a case to you here, because I do not hold the opposing position. But I also find your argument that I should have not done so unconvincing. Both seem like reasonable choices to me.
I have two tests for this. First: what harm does my comment here cause? Perhaps some mild embarrassment? It could not realistically do more.
Second: if it were me, would I mind it being done to me? No. It is not a big deal. It is public feedback about an insulting computer program, no one was injured, no safety-critical system compromised. I have been called out for mistakes before, in classes, on mailing lists, on forums, I learn and try to do better. The only times I have resented it are when I think the complaint is wrong. (And with age, I would say the only correct thing to do then is, after taking the time to consider it carefully, clearly respond to feedback you disagree with.)
The only thing I can draw from thinking through this is, because the authors of the program probably didn’t see my comment, it was not effective, and so I would have been better emailing them. But that is a statement about effectiveness not rightness. I would be more than happy doing it in a group in person at a party or a classroom. Mistakes do not have to be handled privately.
I am sorry we disagree about this. If you think I am missing anything I am open to thinking about it more.
> I am sorry we disagree about this. If you think I am missing anything I am open to thinking about it more.
I am sorry I'm responding to this so late. I very much appreciate the dialogue you're extending here! I don't think I'll have the time to give you the response you deserve, but I'll try to sketch out some of the ideas.
This is all a matter of degree. Calling individuals out on mailing lists, in internal company comms, or in class still feels different than going and listing all an org's members on a website (even more so than e.g. just listing the CEO).
There's a couple of factors here at play, but mainly it's the combination of:
1. The overall AI trend is a large, impactful thing, but this was a small thing
2. Just listing the names without any explanation other than "they're responsible"
This just pattern matches to types of online behavior I find quite damaging for discourse too closely for my liking.
> They sent thoughtless, form-letter thank you emails to 157 people. That makes me less sympathetic to the vitriol these guys are getting not more ...
> Heck Rob Pike did this himself back in the day on Usenet with Mark V. Shaney ...
> And yes this is annoying to get this kind of email no matter who it's from ...
Pretty sure Rob Pike doesn't react this way to every article of spam he receives, so maybe the issue isn't really about spam, huh? More of an existential crisis: I helped build this thing that doesn't seem to be an agent of good. It's an extreme & emotional reaction but it isn't very hard to understand.
You're misreading my comment. I understand Rob Pike's reaction (which is against the general state of affairs, not those three individuals). I explicitly said it makes sense to me. I'm reacting to @crawshaw specifically listing out the names of people.
Heck Rob Pike did this himself back in the day on Usenet with Mark V. Shaney (and wasted far more people's time on Usenet with this)!
This whole anger seems weirdly misplaced. As far as I can tell, Rob Pike was infuriated at the AI companies and that makes sense to me. And yes this is annoying to get this kind of email no matter who it's from (I get a ridiculous amount of AI slop in my inbox, but most of that is tied with some call to action!) and a warning suffices to make sure Sage doesn't do it again. But Sage is getting put on absolute blast here in an unusual way.
Is it actually crossing a bright moral line to name and shame them? Not sure about bright. But it definitely feels weirdly disproportionate and makes me uncomfortable. I mean, when's the last time you named and shamed all the members of an org on HN? Heck when's the last time that happened on HN at all (excluding celebrities or well-known public figures)? I'm struggling to think of any startup or nonprofit, where every team member's name was written out and specifically held accountable, on HN in the last few years. (That's not to say it hasn't happened: but I'd be surprised if e.g. someone could find more than 5 examples out of all the HN comments in the past year).
The state of affairs around AI slop sucks (and was unfortunately easily predicted by the time GPT-3 came around even before ChatGPT came out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32830301). If you want to see change, talk to policymakers.