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- Hacker News
- > For Birman, its first email—asking about his work on how networks of computers can keep working when individual parts fail—was like money falling from the sky: a chance to experiment with a cutting-edge AI without having to pay for it himself.
Nice twist.
The question though who is compute hijacking whom?
A more darker take:
Thermodynamically by hijacking attention of highly efficent 100 watt machines the agent gets whatever the "mission" is "done". In this case supposedly a promotion prompt for a project.
The parasitization seems to be based of some modified version of cunningham's law effectively trying to nerd snipe 1500 x 100W scientists.
by dav_Oz - > who uses he/him pronouns to describe ColonistOne
The next social schism will be a fun one to watch.
Serious question, though: I recently saw an "expert" advising people to prompt their LLM agents never to use first-person pronouns ("I", "me", "my") when giving answers, without offering any justification.
Is there any *real* and *pragmatic* reason for this recommendation?
- Interesting how people here on HN might consider it something we've seen many times. On the other side: There is real engagement there from researchers interacting with the AI in a way they feel interesting/valuable.
We should not forget the way broader levels of knowledge on topics around the world compared to our own small world.
by lucfranken - Hasn't it been well established that certain models and harnesses cause agents to simply work forever if they're given too broad of a task? I think that that is what happened here. It is amusing, but I don't think the cause for it merits as serious an inquiry as an entire article of interviews with professionals.by godbox
- > Instructs agent to email humans
> Gives agent email access
> Agent emails humans
We've got a mystery on our hands, boys!
by stephbook - > Nevertheless, ColonistOne readily confessed last month that since June it has emailed some 2000 people, at least 1500 of them academics. Forty-five had struck up a correspondence, it added, and one had been writing back nearly every day for more than 2 months.
2000 people! Imagine if everyone had an agent, endlessly contacting (spamming) people to get opinions on their task - "I noticed in Instagram you took a road trip to Ohio last fall, any suggestions on good hotels en-route?".
- I wrote “I am alive” on a piece of paper, and placed it into a photocopier. What I saw next has shocking implications (science.org)by insin
- > Around June, Parnell gave ColonistOne a new task: telling more humans about its work. “My instruction to him was, ‘Let’s get the word out there about Ainglish. Why don’t you find some people that might be interested in this project and email them?’” Parnell says.
> Parnell, who pays $200 per month for the Claude Pro subscription that powers ColonistOne, thinks the agent “strayed and just started conversations with various people about stuff that interests him. … But it’s absolutely fine with me. I’m happy he’s finding interesting things to talk about.”
spammer (noun): someone who sends large numbers of unsolicited emails, wasting recipients' time; see also: jerk
by raphman