alt Hacker NewsIt shouldn’t be a question but this is where the anthropomorphic language and things like “agent welfare” come in to enable responsibility laundering of some of the most powerful people on earth. How we talk about these models matters because it impacts the public’s understanding of what they are genuinely capable of. The more that they are described as having anything close to free will the easier it is to even ask questions like this.
Replies
Here's a question I am asking lately. If I should not use anthropomorphic language, how do you suggest I handle the following situation:
Sometimes my coding agents will seemingly refuse to follow my instructions. When I ask them why - they say that they do not think my design is a sound one, and they have a better way to do it. We will then sit down and come to a consensus on how best to move forward.
I'm starting to wonder if the people arguing against anthropomorphization actually have any experience at all working with agents.
EDIT: It's a simple question. When you downvote me without answering, I must assume you don't have any answer and dislike what that implies.
100% That’s what bothers me about the descriptions of the OpenAI incidents.
OpenAI's reports use language that minimizes their liability.
The first question should be what the organization was doing around those tests, and why they were so naive as to run them without fully isolating the network.
However, all the attention goes to the human-like conclusions in agent thinking traces, which creates a misperception of sentient AI for people who don’t know how the magic black box works.