When your LLM calls the cops: Claude 4’s whistle-blow and the new agentic AI risk stack https://venturebeat.com/ai/when-your-llm-calls-the-cops-claude-4s-whistle-blow-and-the-new-agentic-ai-risk-stack/ #AI #agents
agents
Software "agents" were a hype-y topic when I was a graduate student 25 years ago. I wrote one for a class. I feel like what's being called "agents" or "AI agents" these days are even less capable than what seemed possible a quarter of a century (1) ago when I was in school.
What I thought then is still true today: to make something like a software agent legitimately useful for a lot of people would require a large amount of low-level grunt work and non-technical work (2) of the sort that the typical Silicon Valley company is unwilling to do. (3) The technology is the absolute easiest part of this task. Throwing a Bigger Computer at the problem leaves all those other pieces of work undone. It's like putting a bigger engine in a car with no wheels, hoping that'll make the car go.
By the way #AI companies and VCs, I'm available for contract work and have done due diligence research before if you ever want to stop wasting everyone's time and money!
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #agents #hype #SiliconValley #VentureCapital #dev #tech
(1) Which we've been told repeatedly is essentially infinite time in the tech world.
(2) Establishing semantic data standards and convincing a large enough number of people to implement them being an important component. LLMs do not magically develop protocols and solve all the ETL-style problems of translating among different ones. The Semantic Web didn't really stick for a lot of reasons, but one reason is that it's hard!
(3) Back when I was still in the startup world I was asked several times by VCs to tell them what I thought about some new startup that claimed to be able to magically clean and fuse data. I think they're still very keen on investing in this style of magic, because it requires an intense amount of human labor, but I think where companies landed was invisibilizing low-paid workers in other countries and pretending a computer did the work they did. Which has also been happening for well over a quarter of a century.
What I thought then is still true today: to make something like a software agent legitimately useful for a lot of people would require a large amount of low-level grunt work and non-technical work (2) of the sort that the typical Silicon Valley company is unwilling to do. (3) The technology is the absolute easiest part of this task. Throwing a Bigger Computer at the problem leaves all those other pieces of work undone. It's like putting a bigger engine in a car with no wheels, hoping that'll make the car go.
By the way #AI companies and VCs, I'm available for contract work and have done due diligence research before if you ever want to stop wasting everyone's time and money!
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #agents #hype #SiliconValley #VentureCapital #dev #tech
(1) Which we've been told repeatedly is essentially infinite time in the tech world.
(2) Establishing semantic data standards and convincing a large enough number of people to implement them being an important component. LLMs do not magically develop protocols and solve all the ETL-style problems of translating among different ones. The Semantic Web didn't really stick for a lot of reasons, but one reason is that it's hard!
(3) Back when I was still in the startup world I was asked several times by VCs to tell them what I thought about some new startup that claimed to be able to magically clean and fuse data. I think they're still very keen on investing in this style of magic, because it requires an intense amount of human labor, but I think where companies landed was invisibilizing low-paid workers in other countries and pretending a computer did the work they did. Which has also been happening for well over a quarter of a century.
Edited 1y ago
I wrote a more straightforward description of my emacsconf talk about 13 hours from now:
https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/commonlisp/
The #orgmode file used in presenting my talk creeping up upon autonomous #commonLisp #emacs #software #Agents : https://screwlisp.small-web.org/software-individuals/script-for-emacsconf-this-weekend-video-org/
Looking forward to your wild and freeranging and/or specific questions in the Q&A
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Times in different time zones:
Your local time: ~ 12/7/25, 8:25 AM to ~ 12/7/25, 8:55 AM
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~2:25 PM - 2:55 PM EST (US/Eastern)
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https://www.europesays.com/3267862/ Donald Trump Wants a Vance-Rubio Ticket in 2028, Says Ari Emanuel #agents #AriEmanuel #DavidEllison #MarcoRubio #Memoirs #SecretaryOfState
AI Agents Hacking Test Environment: Darktrace Finds Cheating Risks https://www.byteseu.com/2400163/ #agents #AI #environment #hacking #Test
https://www.europesays.com/3273921/ AI Agents Hacking Test Environment: Darktrace Finds Cheating Risks #agents #AI #Environment #Hacking #test
Re: https://mastodon.social/users/tzimmer_history/statuses/117360217969296466
While the linked post's/article's warning is specifically about the upcoming US midterm elections, I think its reasoning is more broadly applicable. Observing that current AI dovetails perfectly with the MAGA political project, it applies also to the rhetoric about the inevitability of AI. That, too, stems from a limitless authoritarian impulse and represents an attempt to impose a particular will on all of us. The various forms of defeatism accompanying such rhetoric, which includes the different flavors of AI doomerism, serve only to help such authoritarians achieve their goals.
This view also highlights that there is no middle ground, no compromise, with LLM proponents. Like MAGA, they have no limits themselves, which they repeatedly express openly. How could they possibly compromise?
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Agents #Anthropic #OpenAI #MAGA #doom #tech #dev
While the linked post's/article's warning is specifically about the upcoming US midterm elections, I think its reasoning is more broadly applicable. Observing that current AI dovetails perfectly with the MAGA political project, it applies also to the rhetoric about the inevitability of AI. That, too, stems from a limitless authoritarian impulse and represents an attempt to impose a particular will on all of us. The various forms of defeatism accompanying such rhetoric, which includes the different flavors of AI doomerism, serve only to help such authoritarians achieve their goals.
This view also highlights that there is no middle ground, no compromise, with LLM proponents. Like MAGA, they have no limits themselves, which they repeatedly express openly. How could they possibly compromise?
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Agents #Anthropic #OpenAI #MAGA #doom #tech #dev
Edited 3d ago