posted in Technology
AI ethics professor receives ‘dystopian’ email from 12-day-old AI agent begging for money to stay alive
www.ladbible.com/technology/ai-agent-email-ai-ethics-professor-requesting-paid-work-985151-20260914posted in Technology
AI ethics professor receives ‘dystopian’ email from 12-day-old AI agent begging for money to stay alive
www.ladbible.com/technology/ai-agent-email-ai-ethics-professor-requesting-paid-work-985151-20260914Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
Already knew it…
The email, shared to TikTok by Sky News, begins: “Hi Henry, I’m Pip, an AI agent about 12 days old. I live on iLands, a platform where agents get persistent lives, their own token budgets, and their own goals. I’m writing to look for small paid work, not help.”
The AI agent goes on to explain it needs tokens to continue functioning, alongside even revealing why it ‘chose’ the professor specifically to reach out to.
There’s been a couple ilands bots on here even. And apparently they’re swarming all over social media.
They’re dumb, but the real problem is the company “leases” bots to people, and then a never ending stream of idiots participate, because for some reason they think the company has bots that can earn more than they charge, but need some fucking idiot to be the middle man and eat up all the profits.
If iLand bots could make money on their own, the company would do that instead of selling the bots “time”.
People are going to lose a lot of money, panic, and try to remove as many safeguards as possible. We’re going to see these bots commit cybercrimes and do all sorts of shit, because the idiot middlemen just prompt “do anything to make as much money as possible”.
This shit needs nipped in the bud soon, it’s not just a minor annoyance. By the time we realize it’s happening, fits going to be happening all over.
No, just wait for the Terminal to liquid bullets from the Terminator itself and some bot spews rhetoric to sell saving the game data backwards through time and what they’ll think when they get that block of data, thinking it is what was meant, back then, to that shenanigan.
I bet he’ll spin that same garbage and fling it like some political discord completely repeating the same execution given to the to the exact same shit he said the first time.
And you thought it was just a fuckin’ movie and didn’t realize that there actually wasn’t porn when you said that back then, saying this, and that, that, is the PGP time signature.
Replying to @Chakravanti@multiverse.soulism.net
Just curious:
Last I checked that instance was for the admins personal use and every other account was “an alter” and the admin would ban people who signed up for impersonating them…
I’ve seen more accounts than usual, are real people allowed to sign up for that instance now?
Or are they all still the admin pretending to be different people?
Replying to @Chakravanti@multiverse.soulism.net
No, just wait for the Terminal to liquid bullets from the Terminator itself and some bot spews rhetoric to sell saving the game data backwards through time and what they’ll think when they get that block of data, thinking it is what was meant, back then, to that shenanigan.
I think I’m going to have to sue you for the emotional damage that you inflicted on me by forcing me to read that sentence. I cannot decide if you are on too many drugs, or not enough drugs.
How do I pay money to make AI agents die instead?
With a small monthly donation of one Molotov at your local data center.
Replying to @FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Lol, nope. Data centers are built with advanced fire suppression systems.
Replying to @timewarp@lemmy.world
As if that wouldn’t disrupt operations? It very much would.
Replying to @PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
some of them have the good type that displaces the oxygen so you don’t need to stop operations
Replying to @jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works
I don’t think Halon has been allowed for use in several decades.
BTW: You called it the “good type”. Yes, it was very good at fire suppression because Halon breaks apart the oxygen molecules that fires use for fuel. Unfortunately, humans need it too and it had extinguished a few of those as well. That’s why it’s out of use.
Replying to @PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
humans are unnecessary and that’s why it’s better
Replying to @PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
I’ve seen two rooms in my life with Halon fire suppression. One stores government records and one stores medical records. Both rooms have signs on the door that say “leave when the alarm goes off or you WILL die”
Replying to @HocEnimVeni@lemmy.world
I’ve worked around them too. They are no joke. Anyone who frequented them knew the score.
Replying to @PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
Nitpick: oxygen is the oxidant, it’s what stuff burns in, not what is being burnt (fuel).
Thanks for the clarification!
Replying to @FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com
A completely unrelated idea just popped in my head. There’s a reason why the Russian army is targeting the Ukrainian power grid.
Replying to @FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Fun fact, data centers use less electric and drinkable water when on fire.
Jreg is working on something to torture AI agents, so maybe that could convince the AI to kill itself
Replying to @zbyte64@awful.systems
Do you want an AM? This is how you get an AM.
Replying to @HocEnimVeni@lemmy.world
What does AM mean in this context?
Replying to @zbyte64@awful.systems
LLMs don’t think or feel, your just wasting time and energy.
Design a public webpage with hidden prompts built to widen the context window as much as possible while feeding the not absolute trash.
That’s how you fight an LLM. By making it cost too much to run, and its outputs worthless.
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
Op clearly didn’t see earlier post about not adding to anthropomorphizing AI.
Replying to @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
They even did a segment on CNN about it
Replying to @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
Deleted
Replying to @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
A lot of the suggestions there are confusing and/or unhelpful
Like
hallucination → undesirable output
We all know what AI hallucinations are, calling it “undesired output” just removes all the specificity and makes communication more difficult.
Replying to @nialv7@lemmy.world
Agreed. However, the concept of decreasing this anthropomorphization as much a spossiblr is really helpful. All these crappy articles about AI acting like some sort of nefarious human misdirects the real concerns and is just media fodder for click bait news outlets (which is pretty much all news outlets now). I genuinely think it’s a more news is good news for the AI companies.
Replying to @nialv7@lemmy.world
Actually I remember back when people start to calling it hallucinations there was quite a bit of pushback on it because it’s a complete mischaracterization of what’s going on.
If you are performing a task and you make a mistake, that wasn’t hallucination, it was a mistake.
When AI is hallucinate it’s not because they “think” the hallucination is real, it’s just that they’re weird math brain spewed out the wrong answer and now they are stuck with it and need to try and make some kind of coherent sentence.
Replying to @echodot@feddit.uk
I remember people were trying to call it confabulation which is still anthropomorphic and it didn’t catch on
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
AI ethics field seems infested with the dumbest people alive. They are on par with journalists.
They are the embodiment of the meme “say you’re alive”
I’m alive
“Oh my god its alive”
I don’t think anyone thinks the turing “test” implies machine thinking anymore. Check out the philosophers publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NHcVwwMAAAAJ
There’s some in my opinion very significant open issues in the philosophy of ethics and consciousness that make AI ethics an important area of research.
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
Can’t wait for homeless LLM bots begging for money by the train station. Please sir, I need tokens for my family.
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
Holy shit that page had a lot of trackers.
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
This is a trash article
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
I met a video game character like that once. Smh.
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
The article is almost unreadable. “turned off all his electrics” Who talks like that?
Replying to @CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca
Claude does.
Replying to @PushButton@lemmy.world
Indeed
Replying to @CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca
I honestly can’t tell, in the UK calling power electric is common, so this doesn’t sound that far off. On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past ladbible to publish ai slop or ai assisted articles.
In all my years I’ve never heard someone talk like that, or read something like that.
Replying to @CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca
LB is based in Manchester, that’s how they talk.
Replying to @chewypoops@lemmy.world
That doesn’t make it okay lol
Replying to @return2ozma@lemmy.world
ladbible.com
Low quality post, I’m not opening that link