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> It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something. Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt l

> It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something. Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt like this to me, but the volume has been turned up to 11. The otherwise drab Adobe Reader is covered with colorful sparkly buttons and popups suggesting I need not even read the document because it can give me “insights.” First, no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party. But mostly, it can sometimes be a useful tool, and the fact everyone is shoving it in my face reeks of desperation. The tech industry is in real trouble.

pjc50 2y ago
> no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party. This is a massive liability that almost everybody seems to be ignoring. My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking. Maybe an Information Commissioner will get round to issuing a directive some time in the mid-2030s about how none of this complies with GDPR.
- UweSchmidt 2y ago
  I think in general, no major liability issue will come up: - if everyone is doing it, you can't really fault anyone - on some level we are, or will be, kinda dependent on that AI and opting out will probably be made unpleasant via dark patterns as usual - no pushback to every piece of software, including at the operating system level, slurping all the keystrokes and data, let alone the data that's already in the cloud - big tech knows everything about us but to my surprise no major public leak has happened, i.e. one where you really can see your neighbor's private data without buying leaked data from someone on the dark web or wherever - things are moving too fast, and you don't know if you can afford to have your programmers not use tomorrow's AI, for example, so your "bans" will have to be soft etc., this limits the potential pushback and outrage
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking. Yet I can almost guarantee you that someone has put something they shouldn't through ChatGPT, because they either feel like it's a dumb rule, that should not apply to them, or they where in a hurry and what are the odds of them getting caught.
  - dzamo_norton 2y ago
    Oh we can have something stronger than almost a guarantee, I have first hand anecdotes of documents from the financial services sector being fed to ChatGPT for polishing. They weren't trade secrets but their classifications were INTERNAL, _and higher_.
- maddmann 2y ago
  A blanket ban on ai seems like shooting yourself in the foot. What about local models, on prem, or using private azure instances?
sneak 2y ago
Somehow I don’t have this problem with notepad.exe or vim or pandoc or imagemagic or textedit.app or resolve or blender. Maybe it isn’t the tech industry, and just consumer-facing apps.
- XorNot 2y ago
  Open source has been looking better and better lately because it's not in a mad rush to bolt "AI" features onto it (an LLM will do something) and then shove a huge amount of interface in your face to try to get you to use it. On some level it's enormously baffling that this was the thing they decided they needed to do...conversely Adobe Reader on my phone won't shutup about liquid mode either (which uploads to Adobe servers) and Microsoft and Google's solution to "people don't want to use our AI assistants" was to ensure they literally can't be disabled or removed.
  - halostatue 2y ago
    I will simply point you to the iTerm2 AI kerfuffle (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40458135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40458135) as proof that some in open source _are_ in a mad rush to bolt on completely unnecessary "features". It was a bad choice that never should have been implemented as "enabled but not configured", and I have moved away from iTerm2 as a result. I am sure that others have as well. (The grudging move to make it a separately downloadable plugin was good, but too late IMO.)
  - immibis 2y ago
    One of the rare times when the slow pace of open source innovation is actually a benefit, because all innovation that's occurring is making things worse.
- passwordoops 2y ago
  Consumer-facing apps are made by the tech industry, so it is and industry problem
- layer8 2y ago
  Notepad.exe is getting sloppified: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-rewrite-in-notepad-to-enhance-your-writing-with-ai-4088b954-c97b-46dc-813f-959be01746d5 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-rewrite-in-n...
Rendello 2y ago
After a recent Show HN, I got an email from someone saying that they'd set up a page for my 'product' on their product showcase startup site. I followed the link and saw my open-source project pitched as ChatGPT slop. It felt like a violation because it wasn't just an aggregated link, but a rewrite of my readme with an associated 'pitch'.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  I recommend reporting this to dang at hn@ycombinator.com. I imagine that he'd be interested in someone crawling HN in order to send automated lead generation spam.
  - bityard 2y ago
    I don't think dang can do anything about it, I'm sure HN gets scraped all the time. I routinely get spam from cryptocurrency startups to (obfuscated) email addresses I have posted on HN years ago on "Who Wants to be Hired" threads, and from my commit messages on github.
    - jrockway 2y ago
      Github is definitely quite the source of spam. I ended up realizing that when I was tired of having two .gitconfigs with two email addresses (work/personal) and switched to just putting my @users.noreply.github.com in there. No more spam. (Plus I get to show off my 4 digit Github userid. I was the 2367th person to sign up! ;)
      - bityard 2y ago
        Neat. I was pretty late to the party and have a userid halfway into the 6 digits, but somehow I got extremely lucky and landed a two-character username (my initials).
  - jrockway 2y ago
    I get a ton of emails from people on HN and I dunno, it's really my fault for putting my email in my profile. I don't blame HN for this; I don't think it's particularly supportive of this kind of "abuse".
rsynnott 2y ago
Thing is, we've been here before in a much more limited way; people _hated_ it when Microsoft's demonic paperclip did this in Office. "It looks like you're writing a letter". _Hated_ it. It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed, that people will now welcome "It looks like you're [whatever]".
- the_snooze 2y ago
  It's a design that's in companies' best interests. You can have a computer that's a "friend." One that you trust but ultimately has a mind of its own. This contrasts with a computer that's merely a tool, that serves you exclusvely at your pleasure and has zero agency of its own. Which approach gives companies more control over users? Which one allows companies to sell that access to the highest bidder?
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Based on the experience of 20 years ago, though, users are _extremely_ turned off by it. There's little reason to think this has changed (if anything it is likely more pronounced because Clippy came in kinda without baggage, whereas LLMs have a lot of baggage and most of it ain't great). > It's a design that's in companies' best interests. I really don't think it is. Clippy was reputationaly damaging to Microsoft and they had to get rid of it. There's little reason to think this will be different.
    - the_snooze 2y ago
      Modern Big Tech doesn't particularly care what users think. They know they have network effects on their side and that switching costs are high. So what if it's "reputationally damaging?" What are users going to do? They're just resources to be exploited. Microsoft, Google, and their ilk can treat users with contempt if it means more control and more shareholder value.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    Third option: the computer is your enemy, which will follow any sufficiently clever adversary’s orders. Thinking of a computer as a tool seems reasonable, but thinking of your computer as your friend is clownish (which, I think you agree with based on your last comment).

pjc50 2y ago

> no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party. This is a massive liability that almost everybody seems to be ignoring. My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking. Maybe an Information Commissioner will get round to issuing a directive some time in the mid-2030s about how none of this complies with GDPR.

UweSchmidt 2y ago
I think in general, no major liability issue will come up: - if everyone is doing it, you can't really fault anyone - on some level we are, or will be, kinda dependent on that AI and opting out will probably be made unpleasant via dark patterns as usual - no pushback to every piece of software, including at the operating system level, slurping all the keystrokes and data, let alone the data that's already in the cloud - big tech knows everything about us but to my surprise no major public leak has happened, i.e. one where you really can see your neighbor's private data without buying leaked data from someone on the dark web or wherever - things are moving too fast, and you don't know if you can afford to have your programmers not use tomorrow's AI, for example, so your "bans" will have to be soft etc., this limits the potential pushback and outrage
mrweasel 2y ago
> My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking. Yet I can almost guarantee you that someone has put something they shouldn't through ChatGPT, because they either feel like it's a dumb rule, that should not apply to them, or they where in a hurry and what are the odds of them getting caught.
- dzamo_norton 2y ago
  Oh we can have something stronger than almost a guarantee, I have first hand anecdotes of documents from the financial services sector being fed to ChatGPT for polishing. They weren't trade secrets but their classifications were INTERNAL, _and higher_.
maddmann 2y ago
A blanket ban on ai seems like shooting yourself in the foot. What about local models, on prem, or using private azure instances?

sneak 2y ago

Somehow I don’t have this problem with notepad.exe or vim or pandoc or imagemagic or textedit.app or resolve or blender. Maybe it isn’t the tech industry, and just consumer-facing apps.

XorNot 2y ago
Open source has been looking better and better lately because it's not in a mad rush to bolt "AI" features onto it (an LLM will do something) and then shove a huge amount of interface in your face to try to get you to use it. On some level it's enormously baffling that this was the thing they decided they needed to do...conversely Adobe Reader on my phone won't shutup about liquid mode either (which uploads to Adobe servers) and Microsoft and Google's solution to "people don't want to use our AI assistants" was to ensure they literally can't be disabled or removed.
- halostatue 2y ago
  I will simply point you to the iTerm2 AI kerfuffle (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40458135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40458135) as proof that some in open source _are_ in a mad rush to bolt on completely unnecessary "features". It was a bad choice that never should have been implemented as "enabled but not configured", and I have moved away from iTerm2 as a result. I am sure that others have as well. (The grudging move to make it a separately downloadable plugin was good, but too late IMO.)
- immibis 2y ago
  One of the rare times when the slow pace of open source innovation is actually a benefit, because all innovation that's occurring is making things worse.
passwordoops 2y ago
Consumer-facing apps are made by the tech industry, so it is and industry problem
layer8 2y ago
Notepad.exe is getting sloppified: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-rewrite-in-notepad-to-enhance-your-writing-with-ai-4088b954-c97b-46dc-813f-959be01746d5 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-rewrite-in-n...

Rendello 2y ago

After a recent Show HN, I got an email from someone saying that they'd set up a page for my 'product' on their product showcase startup site. I followed the link and saw my open-source project pitched as ChatGPT slop. It felt like a violation because it wasn't just an aggregated link, but a rewrite of my readme with an associated 'pitch'.

CharlesW 2y ago
I recommend reporting this to dang at hn@ycombinator.com. I imagine that he'd be interested in someone crawling HN in order to send automated lead generation spam.
- bityard 2y ago
  I don't think dang can do anything about it, I'm sure HN gets scraped all the time. I routinely get spam from cryptocurrency startups to (obfuscated) email addresses I have posted on HN years ago on "Who Wants to be Hired" threads, and from my commit messages on github.
  - jrockway 2y ago
    Github is definitely quite the source of spam. I ended up realizing that when I was tired of having two .gitconfigs with two email addresses (work/personal) and switched to just putting my @users.noreply.github.com in there. No more spam. (Plus I get to show off my 4 digit Github userid. I was the 2367th person to sign up! ;)
    - bityard 2y ago
      Neat. I was pretty late to the party and have a userid halfway into the 6 digits, but somehow I got extremely lucky and landed a two-character username (my initials).
- jrockway 2y ago
  I get a ton of emails from people on HN and I dunno, it's really my fault for putting my email in my profile. I don't blame HN for this; I don't think it's particularly supportive of this kind of "abuse".

rsynnott 2y ago

Thing is, we've been here before in a much more limited way; people _hated_ it when Microsoft's demonic paperclip did this in Office. "It looks like you're writing a letter". _Hated_ it. It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed, that people will now welcome "It looks like you're [whatever]".

the_snooze 2y ago
It's a design that's in companies' best interests. You can have a computer that's a "friend." One that you trust but ultimately has a mind of its own. This contrasts with a computer that's merely a tool, that serves you exclusvely at your pleasure and has zero agency of its own. Which approach gives companies more control over users? Which one allows companies to sell that access to the highest bidder?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Based on the experience of 20 years ago, though, users are _extremely_ turned off by it. There's little reason to think this has changed (if anything it is likely more pronounced because Clippy came in kinda without baggage, whereas LLMs have a lot of baggage and most of it ain't great). > It's a design that's in companies' best interests. I really don't think it is. Clippy was reputationaly damaging to Microsoft and they had to get rid of it. There's little reason to think this will be different.
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    Modern Big Tech doesn't particularly care what users think. They know they have network effects on their side and that switching costs are high. So what if it's "reputationally damaging?" What are users going to do? They're just resources to be exploited. Microsoft, Google, and their ilk can treat users with contempt if it means more control and more shareholder value.
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  Third option: the computer is your enemy, which will follow any sufficiently clever adversary’s orders. Thinking of a computer as a tool seems reasonable, but thinking of your computer as your friend is clownish (which, I think you agree with based on your last comment).