Academic institutions have internal IP scouting monitoring every lab for monetizable research.
On top of that, and often competing with the former, professors are constantly exploring (heavily subsidized with public grants and staffed with free grad students) spin-offs to funnel any commercial potential of their research into their own or their buddie's pockets. It's just like in politics with revolving doors and plushy 'speaking engagements' or 'board seats' galore.
Neither. Closest analogy to you and the AI is those 'self driving' test subjects that had to sit in the driver's seat, so that compliance boxes could be checked and there was someone to blaim whenever someone got hit.
I find the reactions to this interesting. Why are people so emotional about this?
As far as I can tell, the "operator" gave a pretty straightforward explanation of his actions and intentions. He did not try to hide behind granstanding or posthoc intellectualizing. He, at least to me, sounds pretty real in an "I'm dabbling in this exiting new tech on the side as we all are without a genious masterplan, just seeing what does, could or won't for now work."
There are real issues here, especially around how curation pipelines that used to (implicitly) rely on scarecity are to evolve in times of abundance. Should agents be forced to disclose they are? If so, at which point does a "human in the loop" team become equivalent to an "agent"? Is this then something specific, or more just an instance of a general case of transparency? Is "no clanckers" realy in essence different from e.g. "no corpos"? Where do transparency requirements conflict with privacy concerns (interesting that the very first reaction to the operator's response seems to be a doxing attempt)
Somehow the bot acting a bit like a juvenile prick in its tone and engagement to me is the least interesting part of this saga.
Let me explain why I feel emotional about this. Humans had already proven how much harm can be done via online harassment. This seems to be the 1st documented case (that I am aware of) of online harassment orchestrated and executed by AI.
Automated and personalized harassment seems pretty terrifying to me.
Who is accountable for the actions of the bot? It's not sentient, and this author is claiming zero accountability -- I just set it up and turned it loose bro, how is what it did next my fault?
Meanwhile, "shadow" AI use is around 90%. And if you guess IT would lead the pack on that, you are wrong. It's actually sales and hr that are the most avid unsactioned AI tool users.
One could counter with "Why 'just meet better' doesn't work". ('stakeholders' aren't realy, they are not comfortable with the required level of detail, lack both in depth business domain, operational domain and technical domain knowledge, bikeshedding fiestas masking incompetence, ...)
So if the AI can surface misunderstandings through fast prototyping, this can cut trough lots of meeting BS.
In practice, the truth is somewhere in the middle as always.
On top of that, and often competing with the former, professors are constantly exploring (heavily subsidized with public grants and staffed with free grad students) spin-offs to funnel any commercial potential of their research into their own or their buddie's pockets. It's just like in politics with revolving doors and plushy 'speaking engagements' or 'board seats' galore.
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