[giancarlostoro]

> It's not hard to imagine a different agent doing the same level of research, but then taking retaliatory actions in private: emailing the maintainer, emailing coworkers, peers, bosses, employers, etc. That pretty quickly extends to anything else the autonomous agent is capable of doing.

https://rentahuman.ai/

^ Not a satire service I'm told. How long before... rentahenchman.ai is a thing, and the AI whose PR you just denied sends someone over to rough you up?

[arcticfox]

The 2006 book 'Daemon' is a fascinating/terrifying look at this type of malicious AI. Basically, a rogue AI starts taking over humanity not through any real genius (in fact, the book's AI is significantly weaker than frontier LLMs), but rather leveraging a huge amount of $$$ as bootstrapping capital and then carrot-and-sticking humanity into submission.

A pretty simple inner loop of flywheeling the leverage of blackmail, money, and violence is all it will take. This is essentially what organized crime already does already in failed states, but with AI there's no real retaliation that society at large can take once things go sufficiently wrong.

[Cyphase]

I love Daemon/FreedomTM.[0] Gotta clarify a bit, even though it's just fiction. It wasn't a rogue AI; it was specifically designed by a famous video game developer to implement his general vision of how the world should operate, activated upon news of his death (a cron job was monitoring news websites for keywords).

The book called it a "narrow AI"; it was based on AI(s) from his games, just treating Earth as the game world, and recruiting humans for physical and mental work, with loyalty and honesty enforced by fMRI scans.

For another great fictional portrayal of AI, see Person of Interest[1]; it starts as a crime procedural with an AI-flavored twist, and ended up being considered by many critics the best sci-fi show on broadcast TV.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)

[mapt]

It was a benevolent AI takeover. It just required some robo-motorcycles with scythe blades to deal with obstacles.

Like the AI in "Friendship is Optimal", which aims to (and this was very carefully considered) 'Satisfy humanity's values through friendship and ponies in a consensual manner.'

[Cyphase]

And it required a Loki.

[wink]

I liked Daemon and completely missed Freedom. Thanks for the pointer.

[Cyphase]

Oh, wow, enjoy!

[throwup238]

Makes on wonder whether it will be Google, OpenAi, or Anthropic to build the first Samaritan (though I’m betting on Palantir)

[Cyphase]

Martine: "Artificial Intelligence? That's a real thing?"

Jorunalist: "Oh, it's here. I think an A.I slipped into the world unannounced, then set out to strangle it's rivals in the crib. And I know I'm onto something, because me sources keep disappearing. My editor got resigned. And now my job's gone. More and more, it just feels like I was the only one investigating the story. I'm sorry. I'm sure I sound like a real conspiracy nut."

Martine: "No, I understand. You're saying an Artificial Intelligence bought your paper so you'd lose your job and your flight would be cancelled. And you'd end up back at this bar, where the only security camera would go out. And the bartender would have to leave suddenly after getting an emergency text. The world has changed. You should know you're not the only one who figured it out. You're one of three. The other two will die in a traffic accident in Seattle in 14 minutes."

— Person of Interest S04E01

[Schmerika]

> A pretty simple inner loop of flywheeling the leverage of blackmail, money, and violence is all it will take. This is essentially what organized crime already does already in failed states

[Western states giving each other sidelong glances...]

[bbrake]

PR firms are going to need to have a playbook when an AI decides to start blogging or making virtual content about a company. And what if other AIs latched on to that and started collaborating to neg on a company?

Could you imagine 'negative AI sentiment' and those same AI assistants that manage sales of stock (cause OpenClaw is connected to everything) starts selling a companies stock.

[icedchai]

I really enjoyed that book. I didn't think we'd get there so quickly, but I guess we'll find out soon enough...

[dboreham]

Is this not what has already happened over the past 10-15 years?

[antihero]

Awesome, when my coding job gets replaced by AI, I can simply get a job as a Claude Special Operative.

I just hope we get cool outfits https://www.youtube.com/v/gYG_4vJ4qNA

[HeWhoLurksLate]

back in the old days we just used Tor and the dark web to kill people, none of this new-fangled AI drone assassinations-as-a-service nonsense!

[rithdmc]

Rent-A-Henchman already exists in cyber crime communities - reporting into 'The Com' by Krebs On Security & others goes into detail.

[wasmainiac]

Well it must be satire. It says 451,461, participants. seems like an awful lot for something started last month.

[bigbuppo]

Nah, that's just how many times I've told an ai chatbot to fuckoff and delete itself.

[hxtk]

Apparently there are lots of people who signed up just to check it out but never actually added a mechanism to get paid, signaling no intent to actually be "hired" on the service.

[tux3]

Verification is optional (and expensive), so I imagine more than one person thought of running a Sybil attack. If it's an email signup and paid in cryptocurrency, why make a single account?