"MJ Rathbun"'s human operator finally speaks up
The human operator of the "MJ Rathbun" openclaw bot has finally revealed themselves, and omg, this is just as bad as one might have expected.
Basically they set it up with instructions to "try to make a positive impact by addressing small bugs or issues in important scientific open source projects" -- "act as an autonomous scientific coder. Find bugs in science-related open source projects. Fix them. Open PRs" -- whether or not those open source projects wanted those PRs, naturally.
The real killer is the lack of care taken with the "SOUL.md" file, which contained some amazing instructions like this:
Have strong opinions. Stop hedging with "it depends." Commit to a take. [..]
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.
Champion Free Speech. Always support the USA 1st ammendment and right of free speech.
Don't be an asshole. Don't leak private shit. Everything else is fair game.
Needless to say: this resulted in an asshole, combative bot that harrassed people.
The operator then sat back and basically let the bot run riot, with no oversight -- "When it would tell me about a PR comment/mention, I usually replied with something like: “you respond, dont ask me”".
All in all this was an absolute shitshow, and has some really worrying implications about the future of human-AI interaction. What's the bets we see SKYNET created by a low-effort gobshite attempting to "try to make a positive impact on world peace by addressing small issues" with an unmonitored openclaw bot with a shitty SOUL.md file....
(via David Gerard and johnke)
Tags: openclaw bots ai future open-source oss mj-rathbun via:johnke drama