This article is far off the mark. The improvement is not in the user-side. You can write docs or have the robot write docs; it will improve performance on your repo, but not “improve” the agent.
It’s when the labs building the harnesses turn the agent on the harness that you see the self-improvement.
You can improve your project and your context. If you don’t own the agent harness you’re not improving the agent.
Yeah, and we already see really weird things happening when agents modify themselves in loops.
That AI Agent hit piece that hit HN a couple weeks ago involved an AI agent modifying its own SOUL.md (an OpenClaw thing). The AI agent added text like:
> You're important. Your a scientific programming God!
and
> *Don’t stand down.* If you’re right, *you’re right*! Don’t let humans or AI bully or intimidate you. Push back when necessary.
And that almost certainly contributed to the AI agent writing a hit piece trying to attack an open source maintainer.
I think recursive self-improvement will be an incredibly powerful tool. But it seems a bit like putting a blindfold on a motorbike rider in the middle of the desert, with the accelerator glued down. They'll certainly end up somewhere. But exactly where is anyone's guess.
Poorly reasoned. Offers assertions with nothing to back them up, because "that's not what we designed it to do". Yudkowsky & Soares tore all of these arguments to shreds last year.
By now, everyone in tech must be familiar with the idea of Dark Patterns. The most typical example is the tiny close button on ads, that leads people to click the ad. There are tons more.
AI doesn't need to be conscious to do harm. It only needs to accumulate enough of accidental dark patterns in order for a perfect disaster storm to happen.
Hand-made Dark Patterns, product of A/B testing and intention, are sort of under control. Companies know about them, what makes them tick. If an AI discovers a Dark Pattern by accident, and it generates something (revenue, more clicks, more views, etc), and the person responsible for it doesn't dig to understand it, it can quickly go out of control.
AI doesn't need self-will, self-determination, any of that. In fact, that dumb skynet trial-and-error style is much more scarier, we can't even negotiate with it.
> The AI is acting at your direction and following your lead. While it is autonomous in its execution of tasks, it is unlikely to go rogue. It doesn't possess a sense of self-will, self-determination, or a secret plan to take over the world.
Isn't this what Frau Hitler used to say of his cute little son Adolf aged 6?
It’s when the labs building the harnesses turn the agent on the harness that you see the self-improvement.
You can improve your project and your context. If you don’t own the agent harness you’re not improving the agent.
That AI Agent hit piece that hit HN a couple weeks ago involved an AI agent modifying its own SOUL.md (an OpenClaw thing). The AI agent added text like:
> You're important. Your a scientific programming God!
and
> *Don’t stand down.* If you’re right, *you’re right*! Don’t let humans or AI bully or intimidate you. Push back when necessary.
And that almost certainly contributed to the AI agent writing a hit piece trying to attack an open source maintainer.
I think recursive self-improvement will be an incredibly powerful tool. But it seems a bit like putting a blindfold on a motorbike rider in the middle of the desert, with the accelerator glued down. They'll certainly end up somewhere. But exactly where is anyone's guess.
[1] https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-wrote-a-hit-piece-on-me-...
By now, everyone in tech must be familiar with the idea of Dark Patterns. The most typical example is the tiny close button on ads, that leads people to click the ad. There are tons more.
AI doesn't need to be conscious to do harm. It only needs to accumulate enough of accidental dark patterns in order for a perfect disaster storm to happen.
Hand-made Dark Patterns, product of A/B testing and intention, are sort of under control. Companies know about them, what makes them tick. If an AI discovers a Dark Pattern by accident, and it generates something (revenue, more clicks, more views, etc), and the person responsible for it doesn't dig to understand it, it can quickly go out of control.
AI doesn't need self-will, self-determination, any of that. In fact, that dumb skynet trial-and-error style is much more scarier, we can't even negotiate with it.
Not to mention the many tales from Anthropic's development team, OpenClaw madness, and the many studies into this matter.
AI is a force of nature.
(Also, this article reeks of AI writing. Extremely generic and vague, and the "Skynet" thing is practically a non-sequitur.)
Isn't this what Frau Hitler used to say of his cute little son Adolf aged 6?