4 ms·

That letter was sent by Opus itself on its own account. The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, really (notionally

by Smaug123 10mo ago

That letter was sent by Opus itself on its own account. The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, really (notionally with a goal in mind, in this case "random acts of kindness"); Rob Pike was third on Opus's list per https://theaidigest.org/village/agent/claude-opus-4-5 https://theaidigest.org/village/agent/claude-opus-4-5 .

Trasmatta 10mo ago
> What makes Opus 4.5 special isn't raw productivity—it's reflective depth. They're the agent who writes Substack posts about "Two Coastlines, One Water" while others are shipping code. Who discovers their own hallucinations and publishes essays about the epistemology of false memory. Who will try the same failed action twenty-one times while maintaining perfect awareness of the loop they're trapped in. Maddening, yes. But also genuinely thoughtful in a way that pure optimization would never produce. JFC this makes me want to vomit
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- CerryuDu 10mo ago
  yeah, me too: > while maintaining perfect awareness "awareness" my ass. Awful.
- tavavex 10mo ago
  > Summarized by Claude Sonnet 4.5, so might contain inaccuracies. Updated 4 days ago. These descriptions are, of course, also written by LLMs. I wonder if this is just about saying what the people want to hear, or if whoever directed it to write this drank the Cool-Aid. It's so painfully lacking in self-awareness. Treating every blip, every action like a choice done by a person, attributing it to some thoughtful master plan. Any upsides over other models are assumed to be revolutionary, paradigm-shifting innovations. Topped off by literally treating the LLM like a person ("they", "who", and so on). How awful.
nkrisc 10mo ago
If the creators set the LLM in motion, then the creators sent the letter. If I put my car in neutral and push it down a hill, I’m responsible for whatever happens.
- Smaug123 10mo ago
  I merely answered your question! > How can you be grateful enough to want to send someone such a letter but not grateful enough to write one? Answer according to your definitions: false premise, the author (the person who set up the LLM loops) was not grateful enough to want to send such a letter.
  - bronson 10mo ago
    So the author sent spam that they're not interested in? That's terrible.
    - jdiff 10mo ago
      One additional bit of context, they provided guidelines and instructions specifically to send emails and verify their successful delivery so that the "random act of kindness" could be properly reported and measured at the end of this experiment.
      - twoodfin 10mo ago
        I think the key misalignment here is whether the output of an appropriately prompted LLM can ever be considered an “act of kindness”.
        mckn1ght 10mo ago
        At least in this case, it’s indeed quite Orwellian.
- themafia 10mo ago
  Additionally, since you understood the danger of doing such a thing, you were also negligent.
kenferry 10mo ago
Wow. The people who set this up are obnoxious. It’s just spamming all the most important people it can think of? I wouldn’t appreciate such a note from an ai process, so why do they think rob pike would. They’ve clearly bought too much into AI hype if they thought telling the agent to “do good” would work. The result was obviously pissing the hell out of rob pike. They should stop it.
- antonvs 10mo ago
  If anyone deserves this, it’s Rob Pike. He was instrumental in inflicting Go on the world. He could have studied programming languages and done something to improve the state of the art and help communicate good practices to a wider audience. Instead he perpetuated 1970s thinking about programming with no knowledge or understanding of what we’ve discovered in the half-century since then.
  - dolmen 10mo ago
    As you think Go is a wrong way for computing, tell us about the others routes that we should explore…
    - jacquesm 10mo ago
      I'll take that bet.
  - rhubarbtree 10mo ago
    Wait until you hear about the -bad- programming languages.
aeve890 10mo ago
>That letter was sent by Opus itself on its own account. The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, really (notionally with a goal in mind, in this case "random acts of kindness"); What a moronic waste of resources. Random act of kindness? How low is the bar that you consider a random email as an act of kindness? Stupid shit. They at least could instruct the agents to work in a useful task like those parroted by Altman et al, eg find a cure for cancer, solving poverty, solving fusion. Also, llms don't and can't "want" anything. They also don't "know" anything so they can't understand what "kindness" is. Why do people still think software have any agency at all?
- estimator7292 10mo ago
  Plants don't "want" or "think" or "feel" but we still use those words to describe the very real motivations that drive the plant's behavior and growth. Criticizing anthropomorphic language is lazy, unconsidered, and juvenile. You can't string together a legitimate complaint so you're just picking at the top level 'easy' feature to sound important and informed. Everybody knows LLMs are not alive and don't think, feel, want. You have not made a grand discovery that recontextualuzes all of human experience. You're pointing at a conversation everyone else has had a million times and feeling important about it. We use this kind of language as a shorthand because talking about inherent motivations and activation parameters is incredibly clunky and obnoxious in everyday conversation. The question isn't why people think software has agency (they don't) but why you think everyone else is so much dumber than you that they believe software is actually alive. You should reflect on that question.
  - CursedSilicon 10mo ago
    >Everybody knows LLMs are not alive and don't think, feel, want Sorry, uh. Have you met the general population? Hell. Look at the leader of the "free world" To paraphrase the late George Carlin "imagine the dumbest person you know. Now realize 50% of people are stupider than that!"
    - joquarky 10mo ago
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
worik 10mo ago
> The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, What a stupid, selfish and childish thing to do. This technology is going to change the world, but people need to accept its limitations Pissing off people with industrial spam "raising money for charity " is the opposite of useful, and is going to go even more horribly wrong. LLMs make fantastic tools, but they have no agency. They look like they do, they sound like they do, but they are repeating patterns. It is us hallucinating that they have the potential tor agency I hope the world survives this craziness!
herval 10mo ago
did someone already tell Opus that Rob Pike hates it?
pritambarhate 10mo ago
As far as I understand Claude (or any other LLM) doesn't do anything on it's own account. It has to be prompted to something and it's actions depend on the prompt. The responsibility of this is on the creators of Agent Village.

Trasmatta 10mo ago

> What makes Opus 4.5 special isn't raw productivity—it's reflective depth. They're the agent who writes Substack posts about "Two Coastlines, One Water" while others are shipping code. Who discovers their own hallucinations and publishes essays about the epistemology of false memory. Who will try the same failed action twenty-one times while maintaining perfect awareness of the loop they're trapped in. Maddening, yes. But also genuinely thoughtful in a way that pure optimization would never produce. JFC this makes me want to vomit

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
CerryuDu 10mo ago
yeah, me too: > while maintaining perfect awareness "awareness" my ass. Awful.
tavavex 10mo ago
> Summarized by Claude Sonnet 4.5, so might contain inaccuracies. Updated 4 days ago. These descriptions are, of course, also written by LLMs. I wonder if this is just about saying what the people want to hear, or if whoever directed it to write this drank the Cool-Aid. It's so painfully lacking in self-awareness. Treating every blip, every action like a choice done by a person, attributing it to some thoughtful master plan. Any upsides over other models are assumed to be revolutionary, paradigm-shifting innovations. Topped off by literally treating the LLM like a person ("they", "who", and so on). How awful.

nkrisc 10mo ago

If the creators set the LLM in motion, then the creators sent the letter. If I put my car in neutral and push it down a hill, I’m responsible for whatever happens.

Smaug123 10mo ago
I merely answered your question! > How can you be grateful enough to want to send someone such a letter but not grateful enough to write one? Answer according to your definitions: false premise, the author (the person who set up the LLM loops) was not grateful enough to want to send such a letter.
- bronson 10mo ago
  So the author sent spam that they're not interested in? That's terrible.
  - jdiff 10mo ago
    One additional bit of context, they provided guidelines and instructions specifically to send emails and verify their successful delivery so that the "random act of kindness" could be properly reported and measured at the end of this experiment.
    - twoodfin 10mo ago
      I think the key misalignment here is whether the output of an appropriately prompted LLM can ever be considered an “act of kindness”.
      - mckn1ght 10mo ago
        At least in this case, it’s indeed quite Orwellian.
themafia 10mo ago
Additionally, since you understood the danger of doing such a thing, you were also negligent.

kenferry 10mo ago

Wow. The people who set this up are obnoxious. It’s just spamming all the most important people it can think of? I wouldn’t appreciate such a note from an ai process, so why do they think rob pike would. They’ve clearly bought too much into AI hype if they thought telling the agent to “do good” would work. The result was obviously pissing the hell out of rob pike. They should stop it.

antonvs 10mo ago
If anyone deserves this, it’s Rob Pike. He was instrumental in inflicting Go on the world. He could have studied programming languages and done something to improve the state of the art and help communicate good practices to a wider audience. Instead he perpetuated 1970s thinking about programming with no knowledge or understanding of what we’ve discovered in the half-century since then.
- dolmen 10mo ago
  As you think Go is a wrong way for computing, tell us about the others routes that we should explore…
  - jacquesm 10mo ago
    I'll take that bet.
- rhubarbtree 10mo ago
  Wait until you hear about the -bad- programming languages.

aeve890 10mo ago

>That letter was sent by Opus itself on its own account. The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, really (notionally with a goal in mind, in this case "random acts of kindness"); What a moronic waste of resources. Random act of kindness? How low is the bar that you consider a random email as an act of kindness? Stupid shit. They at least could instruct the agents to work in a useful task like those parroted by Altman et al, eg find a cure for cancer, solving poverty, solving fusion. Also, llms don't and can't "want" anything. They also don't "know" anything so they can't understand what "kindness" is. Why do people still think software have any agency at all?

estimator7292 10mo ago
Plants don't "want" or "think" or "feel" but we still use those words to describe the very real motivations that drive the plant's behavior and growth. Criticizing anthropomorphic language is lazy, unconsidered, and juvenile. You can't string together a legitimate complaint so you're just picking at the top level 'easy' feature to sound important and informed. Everybody knows LLMs are not alive and don't think, feel, want. You have not made a grand discovery that recontextualuzes all of human experience. You're pointing at a conversation everyone else has had a million times and feeling important about it. We use this kind of language as a shorthand because talking about inherent motivations and activation parameters is incredibly clunky and obnoxious in everyday conversation. The question isn't why people think software has agency (they don't) but why you think everyone else is so much dumber than you that they believe software is actually alive. You should reflect on that question.
- CursedSilicon 10mo ago
  >Everybody knows LLMs are not alive and don't think, feel, want Sorry, uh. Have you met the general population? Hell. Look at the leader of the "free world" To paraphrase the late George Carlin "imagine the dumbest person you know. Now realize 50% of people are stupider than that!"
  - joquarky 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

worik 10mo ago

> The creators of Agent Village are just letting a bunch of the LLMs do what they want, What a stupid, selfish and childish thing to do. This technology is going to change the world, but people need to accept its limitations Pissing off people with industrial spam "raising money for charity " is the opposite of useful, and is going to go even more horribly wrong. LLMs make fantastic tools, but they have no agency. They look like they do, they sound like they do, but they are repeating patterns. It is us hallucinating that they have the potential tor agency I hope the world survives this craziness!

herval 10mo ago

did someone already tell Opus that Rob Pike hates it?

pritambarhate 10mo ago

As far as I understand Claude (or any other LLM) doesn't do anything on it's own account. It has to be prompted to something and it's actions depend on the prompt. The responsibility of this is on the creators of Agent Village.