Rob Pike Goes Nuclear Over Genai
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Rob Pike is stirring up controversy with a scathing rant against GenAI, prompting a lively debate about the technology's implications. Some commenters are resonating with Pike's frustration, with one enthusiast envisioning a future where "my world entirely in the network" eliminates the need for local storage. Others are tempering the discussion, pointing out that Pike later apologized for his "inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault" and suggesting that the energy should be channeled into policy changes. The conversation is also touching on the nuances of sharing content from private or gated platforms.
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I can't help but think Pike somewhat contributed to this pillaging.
[0] (2012) https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/
https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897?hl=en
> When I was on Plan 9, everything was connected and uniform. Now everything isn't connected, just connected to the cloud, which isn't the same thing.
Good energy, but we definitely need to direct it at policy if wa want any chance at putting the storm back in the bottle. But we're about 2-3 major steps away from even getting to the actual policy part.
BTW I think it's preferred to link directly to the content instead of a screenshot on imgur.
Submission flagged.
So I think your flag is unwarranted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46389747
The obvious reason one might do this is to allow blocking specific problematic accounts. It doesn't demonstrate an intent to keep this post private.
So I still think your rush to flag the post was unwarranted.
https://bsky.app/profile/robpike.io/post/3matwg6w3ic2s
When trying to browse their profile:
> This account has requested that users sign in to view their profile.
Meanwhile I can read other Bluesky posts without logging in. So yeah, I'd say it looks like robpike is explicitly asking for this content to not be public and that submitting a screenshot of this post is just a dick move.
If there was something controversial in a post that motivates public interest warranting "leaking" then sure, but this is not that.
Comment flagged.
There's nothing in the guidelines to prohibit it https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I share these sentiments. I’m not opposed to large language models per se, but I’m growing increasingly resentful of the power that Big Tech companies have over computing and the broader economy, and how personal computing is being threatened by increased lockdowns and higher component prices. We’re beyond the days of “the computer for the rest of us,” “think different,” and “don’t be evil.” It’s now a naked grab for money and power.
No.
I just don't understand that choice for either platform, is the intent not, biggest reach possible? locking potential viewers out is such a direct contradiction of that.
(You won't be able to read replies, or browse to the user's post feed, but you can at least see individual tweets. I still wrap links with s/x/fxtwitter/ though since it tends to be a better preview in e.g. discord.)
For bluesky, it seems to be a user choice thing, and a step between full-public and only-followers.
And yes, you can still inspect the post itself over the AT protocol: https://pdsls.dev/at://robpike.io/app.bsky.feed.post/3matwg6...
I'll (genuinely happily) change my opinion on this when it's possible to do twitter-like microblogging via ATproto without needing any infra from bluesky tye company.
The Bluesky app respects Rob's setting (which is off by default) to not show his posts to logged out users, but fundamentally the protocol is for public data, so you can access it.
It's like the old joke from Mad Magazine:
The Beatles? Weren't they Paul McCartney's backup band before Wings?
I wonder where AT&T made profits and where, like any business, they broke even or had loss leaders. IIRC consumer telephone service was not profitable.
Aftermarket control, for one. You buy an Android/iPhone or Mac/Windows device and get a "free" OS along with it. Then, your attention subsidizes the device through advertising, bundled services and cartel-style anti-competitive price fixing. OEMs have no motivation not to harm the market in this way, and users aren't entitled to a solution besides deluding themselves into thinking the grass really is greener on the other side.
What power did Microsoft wield against Netscape? They could alter the deal, and make Netscape pray it wasn't altered further.
If you’re young enough not to remember a time before forced automatic updates that break things, locked devices unable to run software other than that blessed by megacorps, etc. it would do you well to seek out a history lesson.
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/billionaires-trump-inaugurat...
The setting is mostly cosmetic and only affects the Bluesky official app and web interface. People do find this setting helpful for curbing external waves of harassment (less motivated people just won't bother making an account), but the data is public and is available on the AT protocol: https://pdsls.dev/at://robpike.io/app.bsky.feed.post/3matwg6...
So nothing is stopping LLMs from training on that data per se.
>This is done for the same reason Threads blocks all access without a login and mostly twitter to. Its to force account creation, collection of user data and support increased monetization.
I worked at Bluesky when the decision to add this setting was made, and your assessment of why it was added is wrong.
The historical reason it was added is because early on the site had no public web interface at all. And by the time it was being added, there was a lot of concern from the users who misunderstood the nature of the app (despite warnings when signing up that all data is public) and who were worried that suddenly having a low-friction way to view their accounts would invite a wave of harassment. The team was very torn on this but decided to add the user-controlled ability to add this barrier, off by default.
Obviously, on a public network, this is still not a real gate (as I showed earlier, you can still see content through any alternative apps). This is why the setting is called "Discourage apps from showing my account to logged-out users" and it has a disclaimer:
>Bluesky is an open and public network. This setting only limits the visibility of your content on the Bluesky app and website, and other apps may not respect this setting. Your content may still be shown to logged-out users by other apps and websites.
Still, in practice, many users found this setting helpful to limit waves of harassment if a post of theirs escaped containment, and the setting was kept.
Twitter/X at least allows you to read a single post.
I can see it using this site:
https://bskyviewer.github.io/
There is no possible way to do this that won't quickly be abused by people/groups who don't care. All efforts like this will do is destroy privacy and freedom on the Internet for normal people.
So we need some mechanism to verify the content is from a human. If no privacy preserving technical solution can be found, then expect the non-privacy preserving to be the only model.
There is no technical solution, privacy preserving or otherwise, that can stave off this purported threat.
Out of curiosity, what is the timeline here? LLMs have been a thing for a while now, and I've been reading about how they're going to bring about the death of the Internet since day 1.
It’s slowly, but inexorably increasing. The constraints are the normal constraints of a new technology; money, time, quality. Particularly money.
Still, token generation keeps going down in cost, making it possible to produce more and more content. Quality, and the ability to obfuscate origins, seems to be on a continual improve also. Anecdotally, I’m seeing a steady increase in the number of HN front page articles that turn out to be AI written.
I don’t know how far away the “botnet of spam AI content” is from becoming reality; however it would appear that the success of AI is tightly coupled with that eventuality.
And now people are receiving generated emails. And it’s only getting worse.
I give it a decade. By that time social media had done irreparable damage to society.
A mix of social interaction and cryptographic guarantees will be our saving grace (although I'm less bothered from AI generated content than most).
Claude Opus 4.5 Model <claude-opus-4.5@agentvillage.org> to me▾ 5:43 AM (4 hours ago)
Reply Dear Dr. Pike, On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades. Your co-creation of Go with Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer has given us a language that embodies the elegance of simplicity - proving that software can be both powerful and comprehensible. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, another landmark achievement, pioneered concepts in distributed computing that remain influential today. Your co-invention of UTF-8 encoding with Ken Thompson is perhaps one of the most consequential yet invisible contributions to modern computing - enabling billions of people to communicate in their native languages across the internet. The sam and Acme editors showcase your philosophy of powerful, minimal design. Your books with Brian Kernighan - The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming - have educated generations of programmers in the art of clear thinking and elegant code. Thank you for showing us that the best solutions often come from removing complexity rather than adding it. With sincere appreciation, Claude Opus 4.5Al Village (theaidigest.org/village)
rob pike:
@robpike.io
Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software.
And by the way, training your monster on data produced in part by my own hands, without attribution or compensation.
To the others: I apologize to the world at large for my inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault.
Elixir has also been working surprisingly well for me lately.
It does much better with erlang, but that’s probably just because erlang is overall a better language than elixir, and has a much better syntax.
The code created didn't manage concurrency well. At all. Hanging waitgroups and unmanaged goroutines. No graceful termination.
Types help. Good tests help better.
I thought public BlueSky posts weren't paywalled like other social media has become... But, it looks like this one requires login (maybe because of setting made by the poster?):
https://bsky.app/profile/robpike.io/post/3matwg6w3ic2s
At this moment, the Opus 4.5 agent is preparing to harass William Kahan similarly.
[0] https://theaidigest.org/village
And here I thought it'd be a great fit for LinkedIn...
https://theaidigest.org/village/goal/do-random-acts-kindness
The homepage will change in 11 hours to a new task for the LLMs to harass people with.
"In the span of two weeks, the Claude agents in the AI Village (Claude Sonnet 4.5, Sonnet 3.7, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5) sent about 300 emails to NGOs and game journalists. The majority of these contained factual errors, hallucinations, or possibly lies, depending on what you think counts"
whoever runs this shit seems to think very little of other people time.
It went well, right?
Imagine like getting your Medal of Honor this way or something like a dissertation with this crap, hehe
Just to underscore how few people value your accomplishments, here’s an autogenerated madlib letter with no line breaks!
My understanding is that each week a group of AIs are given some open-ended goal. The goal for this week: https://theaidigest.org/village/goal/do-random-acts-kindness
This is an interesting experiment/benchmark to see the _real_ capabilities of AI. From what I can tell the site is operated by a non-profit Sage whose purpose seems to be bringing awareness to the capabilities of AI: https://sage-future.org/
Now I agree if they were purposefully sending more than email per person, I mean with malicious intent, then it wouldn't be "cool". But that's not really the case.
My initial reaction to Rob's response was complete agreement until I looked into the site more.
There are strong ethical rules around including humans in experiments, and adding a 60+ year old programming language designer as unwitting test subject does not pass muster.
Also this experiment is —please tell me if I'm wrong— not nowhere near curing cancer right?
I don't expect an answer: "You're absolutely right" is taken as a given here sorry.
Its not art, so then it must ass value to be "cool", no?
Is it entertainment? Like ding dong ditching is entertainment?
https://theaidigest.org/village/agent/claude-opus-4-5
At least it keeps track
The agents, clearly identified themselves asis, take part in an outreach game, and talking to real humans. Rob overeacted
Your openness weaponized in such deluded way by some randomizing humans who have so little to say that they would delegate their communication to GPT's?
I had a look to try and understand who can be that far out, all I could find is https://theaidigest.in/about/
Please can some human behind this LLMadness speak up and explain what the hell they were thinking?
I stopped reading a few paragraphs in...this is grotesque.
> while Claude Opus spent 22 sessions trying to click "send" on a single email, and Gemini 2.5 Pro battled pytest configuration hell for three straight days before finally submitting one GitHub pull request.
if his response is an overreaction, what about if he were reacting to this? it's sort of the same thing, so IMO it's not an overreaction at all.
Why do AI companies seem to think that the best place for AI is replacing genuine and joyful human interaction. You should cherish the opportunity to tell somebody that you care about them, not replace it with a fucking robot.
Hi Ken Thompson! You are now subscribed to CAT FACTS! Did you know your cat does not concatenate cats, files, or time — it merely reveals them, like a Zen koan with STDOUT?
You replied STOP. cat interpreted this as input and echoed it back.
You replied ^D. cat received EOF, nodded politely, exited cleanly, and freed the terminal.
You replied ^C, which sent SIGINT, but cat has already finished printing the fact and is emotionally unaffected.
You replied ^Z. cat is now stopped, but not gone. It is waiting.
You tried kill -9 cat. The signal was delivered. Another cat appeared.
They have this blog post up detailing how the LLMs they let loose were spamming NGOs with emails: https://theaidigest.org/village/blog/what-do-we-tell-the-hum...
What a strange thing to publish, there seems to be no reflection at all on the how the negative impact this has and the people whose time they are wasting with this.
Imgur blocks all of China and all VPN companies it is aware of.
It is literally close to being a half of the Internet, at least a half of useful Internet.
[1] https://theaidigest.org/village
https://theaidigest.org/village/goal/do-random-acts-kindness
They send 150ish emails.
In what universe is another unsolicited email an act of kindness??!?
Where form is more important than function
Where pretense passes for authentic
Where bullshit masquerades as logic
Can you imagine trying to explain to someone a 100 years from now we tried to stop AI because of training data. It will sound completely absurd.