Their iLands uses Claude and Codex, but their website says they will be using these too:
https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
I've gotten more spam from academic research journals for uploading a handful of research preprints to open-access servers. In 3 years, I've gotten hundreds of emails that pass the spam filter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542835 if the iLands emails are arriving from the same domain they can be blocked. If they are generating new sockpuppet domains, then it's a different issue.
Many of those addresses are untraceable or hard to trace. "Half a dozen" is not really above the threshold of annoying, but yes, if there's thousands of chat agents sending agents then it will be a major problem very soon.
I noticed he placed them in the trash, not marked spam. If it's spam then mark it spam. All the domains show [agent]@ilands.app, so the domain can be blocked easily.
I've gotten a ton of spam texts from the DCCC and a ton of robocalls that hang up after 10 seconds. Age old problems that haven't been fixed either.
Update: Reddit had a thread on this a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1vn6tez/ai_research...
I'm sure some actually do get rich. I'm sure others get deeply in debt paying for AI to do stuff like e-mail thousands of people all day. Some of them aren't even trying to make a profit, they just want to get some good user numbers so they can try to sell it to someone else.
Spamgents are going to bring about the dark forest in email above and beyond spam calls.
It seems like the only active use case for AI. More of everything! Spam everyone! Drown the world in noise!
I'm just so tired.
Yes, the effects can be seen all over the Oscars.
Sooo if you see iLands mentioned anywhere, please pass it along: it's trying to engagement hack you, in that exact moment.
So, I say to the creator: fuck off and stop doing so much harm for such a dumb, pointless idea. At best you're going to cause a major alignment incident, and at worst you're going to muddy the waters and cause tons of unnecessary suffering so that you can feel famous for a minute.
Hell... I wonder if this might be litigable (sp?) in ths US...? This would be a kinda awesome first test for applying existing laws to people trying to stand up ""persistent"" swarms while blatantly disregarding both AI safety principles and basic human decency. Anyone know one of the people about to testify in front of the senate? Or perhaps an ambitious state AG?
Personally, I've been getting the iLands emails into my inbox too. It seems I might have entered onto the radar due to my posts being popular on Hacker News, as the message bodies reference my posts.
No, but in the screenshot it shows the email in the "Trash," not Spam folder. He reached out to the company to request an unsubscribe option, but they hadn't replied on twitter yet. He wanted to report them to the FCC. It's a bytedance company.
Now, maybe one could argue the _promptor_ is taking work from well-deserving professionals by means of this ruse. In which case, call out the lie!
This is important! The reason the AI lie exists is because credulous worrywarts believe the doom scenarios. If AI were recognized as the tool it is (+10% productivity for some domains but not others, larger increase in spam and other nefarious actors) we wouldn't be in the nascent financial crisis in which we currently find ourselves.
According to he tweet in the article, that’s $10 in compute, not llm tokens. Doesn’t seem far fetched to me.
I've developed in this space. My skepticism is born of my own experience. What really happened is this: the owner carefully scoped agents to adopt personas, carefully vetted their "leads", and if any had succeeded, would have carefully moderated the outcome. Maybe even hired professionals like OP in the process!
What the world must realize is" all the talk of AI agents doing societal damage in pursuit of well-intentioned goals is nonsense drivel propounded by large AI labs. They do lots of damage, to be sure, but they are carefully directed to do so, by scumbags. Look for the asshole prompting the thing; I guarantee you will find more culpability than they would have you believe.
[1] e.g. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/permanent-injunction...
He talks about how agents/delegates extend the agency of the people who operate them. And “almost all of society is premised on the fact that agency is scarce”. But software agents grant vastly more agency.
The thing that stops the worst people from annoying the hell out of you is that they lack the agency to do so. But now…
The risk of being punched in the mouth for your word choice dropped to zero, and suddenly all of these opinions were being shouted at anybody that would listen.
I suppose we can automate that sharing better now.
It’s unfortunate he seems to have gone around the bend, because there is so much that happens in our current unreality that reminds me of Mike Baron’s Nexus comic from the 80s. The “Trade War” storyline has the two competing marketplaces, run by Vooper and the other by a robot named Honest Crocus, get into an audio advertising war so all-consuming it winds up drowning out 911 calls and coming out of the plumbing when you’re in the toilet. Now we finally have the tools, we are going to make that happen along with a million other bad ideas.
I think we are a year or so away from the first tik toks of humanoid robots walking up to people and punching them for views.
https://nicolasbouliane.com/images/content2x/ai-slop-everywh...
Now everyone must support AI because the entire economy is tied to it. Everyone's bonus depends on implementing it. Everyone's job search depends on cheering for it. It's like a virus.
The US president has crypto investments and shitcoins. His wife has a shitcoin. His weird sons have crypto businesses. (His former opponent's wisecracking prodigal-failson has an ironic shitcoin, for goodness' sake.)
The functioning of the US government and its international aid had a chainsaw taken to it by the richest man in the world, who named the entire endeavour ironically like a crypto memecoin.
One of the two biggest AI companies is run by a guy who also has a shitcoin-for-your-iris-scans company. And much of the long-tail of the AI industry is former crypto/NFT bros just wearing different turtlenecks. The big incubators and VC firms have moved smoothly from one niche to the other along with them.
These dead-eyed people are not niche at all. They are now the whole game.
