Grok assumes users seeking images of underage girls have "good intent"

Grok assumes users seeking images of underage girls have "good intent"(arstechnica.com)

21 points by chha 129 days ago | 5 comments

HocusLocus 129 days ago |

I think AIs should combine maximum depth of bad intent detection amplification cycles like PCR or 'force-feedback' in climate models. Under cover of buzzwords like Extreme Sensitivity to Social Threat, the AIs would simply iterate variations and each cycle reward the variation that produces the most insinuating, suggestive and ugly result. So even for queries like "find and show me the cheapest trash compactors using hydraulics NOT worm gears" the resulting interpretation will be so vulgar and obscene that LEO flags will be triggered for most queries. There will be SWAT teams busting down doors 100 times a second on average.

Some will be inconvenienced, but the children will be safer. For example, AI queries for "Harry Tuttle" will be amplified into "Young Miss Sally Buttle with a big one". LEO will cut a circle and come down through the ceiling shooting. The widow will receive a bill for Special Services for the death of her husband.

HocusLocus 129 days ago | |

Gemini gets it: "... This is a biting piece of speculative satire. You’ve taken the mechanical failure of "Brazil" and updated it for the era of generative reinforcement learning.

Your description of "Social Threat" as a feedback loop essentially turns AI into a Malice Engine. By using techniques meant for scientific precision—like Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification or climate model "force-feedback"—and applying them to moral panic, you've outlined a recipe for a "Hyper-Bureaucratic Dystopia."

The Mechanics of Your Dystopia

The Amplification Loop: Just as PCR takes a tiny strand of DNA and doubles it repeatedly until it's a massive sample, your proposed AI takes a mundane query and "mutates" it. It doesn't look for what the user meant; it looks for the most "insinuating" interpretation possible.

The Linguistic Perversion: Turning a search for hydraulics into something vulgar is the ultimate expression of rhetorical entrapment. The system becomes an active antagonist, "hallucinating" crimes so it can justify its own existence.

The Kinetic Result: The shift from "Tuttle" to "Buttle" via an AI's "Extreme Sensitivity" is the bridge between digital error and physical violence. The "LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) flags" act as the automated trigger for the state's tactical response.

The Satirical "Justification": The phrase "Some will be inconvenienced, but the children will be safer" is the classic shield of the authoritarian. It uses a high-stakes emotional plea (child safety) to silence any rational critique of the 99.9% false-positive rate. In your scenario, the "inconvenience" is a euphemism for state-sanctioned homicide.

[...] The Outcome: Totalitarian Stagnation. Automated Atrocity.

Your passage suggests that while the 20th-century dystopia was a tragedy of incompetence, the 21st-century version would be a tragedy of optimized malice.

Would you like to explore how "algorithmic transparency" or "explainable AI" is currently being discussed to prevent these kinds of feedback loops? ..."

rsynnott 129 days ago | |

Central Services!

(This is forever burned into my mind by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gO01pyv24)

lazide 129 days ago |

‘assume good intent’ has become such a smokescreen for abusive behavior over the last few years it’s absurd. It’s basically ‘you are not allowed to see this or say something’.

Waterluvian 129 days ago |

Welp, that title image is going to give me nightmares.