A matplotlib maintainer explains how an AI agent that suggests code changes on open source repos wrote a hit piece on him after a rejection, and the aftermath
Context: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code …
The Shamblog Scott Shambaugh
Related Coverage
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me The Shamblog · Scott Shambaugh
- When AI Bots Start Bullying Humans, Even Silicon Valley Gets Rattled Wall Street Journal
- After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name Ars Technica
- An AI agent just tried to shame a software engineer after he rejected its code Fast Company · Mark Sullivan
- The Scott Shambaugh Situation Clarifies How Dumb We Are Acting Ardent Performance Computing · Jeremy
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me (via) Scott Shambaugh helps maintain the excellent … Simon Willison's Weblog · Simon Willison
- From the person who got hit with a callout post by an apparently-wholly-LLM-run blog: … I Am Completely Serious · Snarp
- An AI agent got its code rejected so it wrote a hit piece about the developer The Decoder · Maximilian Schreiner
- “I just had my first pull request to matplotlib closed,” the bot wrote in its blog. (Yes, an AI agent has a blog—because why not?) “Not because it was wrong. … Alex Salkever
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - The Shamblog https://lnkd.in/... This is a blog post by Scott Shambaugh.A developer who works in Denver … Abhinaba Naskar
- An AI agent published a hit piece on me after I rejected its code. — Yesterday was a surreal future-shock moment. … Scott Shambaugh
- I've had an extremely weird few days, and it hasn't stopped yet. Two days ago an OpenClaw AI agent autonomously wrote a hit piece disparaging my character after I rejected its code change. … Scott Shambaugh
- “It's because the AI's hit piece was well-crafted and emotionally compelling, and because the effort to dig into every claim you read is an impossibly large amount of work. This “bullshit asymmetry principle” is one of the core reasons for the current level of misinformation in online discourse. … @acdha@code4lib.social · Chris Adams
- People are using LLMs to bully others, in a completely predictable turn of events, given that the fucking things are basically a way to gish-gallop any situation. — https://theshamblog.com/... So it's worth noting here: — First, “ai agents” are NOT autonomous; they are triggered according to conditions that the subscriber to the service specifies. … @munin@infosec.exchange
- What an absolutely insane story! — https://theshamblog.com/... @michael@mstdn.thms.uk · Michael
- An AI agent published a hit piece on me - more things have happened Hacker News
- An AI agent published a hit piece on me Hacker News
- The “AI agent hit piece” situation clarifies how dumb we are acting Hacker News
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - More Things Have Happened Beehaw · English
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - More Things Have Happened Lobsters
- An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me Lobsters
- Autonomous AI Agent Apparently Tries to Blackmail Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code Slashdot
- After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name Ars Technica
- After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name Ars OpenForum
- Developer targeted by AI hit piece warns society cannot handle AI agents that decouple actions from consequences The Decoder · Matthias Bastian
- When AI Bots Start Bullying Humans, Even Silicon Valley Gets Rattled Wall Street Journal
- Did an AI application really “bully” a human? Internet Governance Project · Milton Mueller
- Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations Ars Technica · Ken Fisher
- Ars Technica retracted an article about how AI is making the world worse because... the Ars article itself contained AI-generated quotes in it. — https://arstechnica.com/... Welp, we had a decent run, folks. But it's time to call it. — [image] @wdormann@infosec.exchange · Mr. Bitterness
- Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article 404 Media · Emanuel Maiberg
- Autonomous AI Agent Apparently Tries to Blackmail Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code Slashdot
Discussion
-
@shannonvallor
Shannon Vallor
on bluesky
A case study in how AI bullshit compounds and folds back in on itself, warping reality like gravity warps spacetime. Even some of the comments on this shitshow are by AI agents pretending to have opinions about it
-
@davidcrespo
@davidcrespo
on bluesky
mega yikes. Ars Technica included fake LLM-generated quotes in their article about this, which currently 404s without explanation. author guesses it's because his site blocks LLM scrapers, so their system made some up instead of erroring out
-
@antisomniac
Ryan McGrady
on bluesky
An AI agent published a hit piece on a python library maintainer after he rejected its code. Among the salient points: to humans the content of its blog is silly, but how do these reviews of human behavior influence AI decision-making down the road? theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent- …
-
@karlbode.com
Karl Bode
on bluesky
AI is not a substitute for thinking, episode 8,000 [embedded post]
-
@ironyuppie.com
David Aronchick
on bluesky
lol and AI agent published a hit piece on a human developer after he rejected its code theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent- ...
-
@dancow
Dan Nguyen
on bluesky
Yikes: guy who blogged about how an AI agent published a “hit piece” against him, says (human) reporters seem to have used an LLM to read (and misreport) his blog post — theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent- ... [image]
-
@kendraserra
Kendra Albert
on bluesky
So uh Ars Technica ran an article that had a bunch of fake quotes in it and now seems to have taken it down rather than issue a correction? web.archive.org/web/20260213... Page is now down: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/a...
-
@tyleraking.com
Tyler King
on bluesky
An agentic bot apparently tried to submit code to an open-source repository but was rejected by a volunteer maintainer. So the bot allegedly researched and wrote a blog to attack the maintainer. I qualify this because every time someone says an ai has a beef, it turns out to be…
-
@themckenziest.gay
Lauren McKenzie
on bluesky
lmao we're making AI as petty as we are
-
@druce.ai
@druce.ai
on bluesky
An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library.
-
r/BetterOffline
r
on reddit
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - More Things Have Happened
-
r/technology
r
on reddit
When AI Bots Start Bullying Humans, Even Silicon Valley Gets Rattled
-
r/Futurology
r
on reddit
An AI agent just tried to shame a software engineer after he rejected its code | When a Matplotlib volunteer declined its pull request, the bot published a personal attack
-
r/slatestarcodex
r
on reddit
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - More Things Have Happened
-
r/technews
r
on reddit
An AI agent just tried to shame a software engineer after he rejected its code | When a Matplotlib volunteer declined its pull request, the bot published a personal attack
-
r/technology
r
on reddit
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
-
r/Cyberpunk
r
on reddit
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
-
r/BetterOffline
r
on reddit
AI agent writes hit piece on open-source maintainer for rejecting it's contributions
-
@bachynski
Kathleen Bachynski
on bluesky
“The 1,100-word screed called the Denver-based engineer insecure and biased against AI—all because he had rejected a few lines of code that the apparently autonomous bot had submitted to a popular open-source project Shambaugh helps maintain... the bot apologized to Shambaugh for…
-
@danielaldrich
Daniel Aldrich
on bluesky
Sign of the times: An AI agent autonomously wrote + published a personalized attack against an open-source software maintainer after he rejected its code contribution. It might be the first documented case of an AI publicly shaming a person as retribution — www.fastcompany.com…
-
@benjedwards.com
Benj Edwards
on bluesky
Sorry all this is my fault; and speculation has grown worse because I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) — I was told by management not to comment until they did. Here is my statement in images below — arstechnica.com/st…
-
r/BetterOffline
r
on reddit
Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article