This is my close reading of the definition of a “stochastic parrot,” which I brought up at this “Critical AI?” conference and was surprised at how many people even in this field reject it. So this is my argument for how I use it, which may or may not be how it was intended. https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/6ac0c5c66bd6ac00018c7121/
This is my close reading of the definition of a “stochastic parrot,” which I brought up at this “Critical AI?” conference and was surprised at how many people even in this field reject it. So this is my argument for how I use it, which may or may not be how it was intended. https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/6ac0c5c66bd6ac00018c7121/
Great article by @CyberneticForests
Models Don't Go Rogue
Today, policymakers and the industry talks about tech using what I call a radical intentionalist position: one that insists we can *only* observe the system by reference to its internal “beliefs,” “thoughts,” and “wants.” That’s a trap — and there are real consequences when it becomes enshrined into policy. https://techpolicy.press/to-make-ai-rules-policymakers-must-resist-the-influence-of-radical-intentionalists
Today, policymakers and the industry talks about tech using what I call a radical intentionalist position: one that insists we can *only* observe the system by reference to its internal “beliefs,” “thoughts,” and “wants.” That’s a trap — and there are real consequences when it becomes enshrined into policy. https://techpolicy.press/to-make-ai-rules-policymakers-must-resist-the-influence-of-radical-intentionalists
RE: https://assemblag.es/@CyberneticForests/117251976494724207
Wonderful article dismantling the "AI goes rogue" narrative.
"If you optimize a model to find exploits in a buggy environment, you should expect it to find exploits and prepare for that outcome. OpenAI did not. They built a model, took the safeguards off, gave it the ExploitGym task, and let it run. That is not rogue AI, it’s human decision-making."
My essay on rogue AI has been republished by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — “Rogue AI didn’t breach Hugging Face, human decisions did.” Grateful for the invitation! https://thebulletin.org/2026/09/rogue-ai-didnt-breach-hugging-face-human-decisions-did/
This episode of Mél Hogan's 'The Data Fix' with Eryk Salvaggio is the most grounded discussion of so-called 'rogue AI' I've come across https://podcastaddict.com/the-data-fix/episode/232031577 These algos aren't 'planning' or 'conspiring' but blindly following imitative but meaningless streams of generated text.
Thank you to people like @CyberneticForests for constantly doing this but I'm tapped out y'all. It's a trap. Constantly debunking whatever random stuff they come up with until you have no time or headspace to do anything else.
I wrote about the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack following my conversation on The Data Fix this week - more on how it happened, what it means, and why I still see "stochastic flocks" rather than "artificial hiveminds" — and a link to our conversation. https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-go-rogue/
I wrote about the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack following my conversation on The Data Fix this week - more on how it happened, what it means, and why I still see "stochastic flocks" rather than "artificial hiveminds" — and a link to our conversation. https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-go-rogue/
“Nobody is losing control of an emerging intelligence. They’re redirecting their own agency to the thing they are building.” It’s a myth, a self-affirming form of sense making: they take the action to build it, but insist on describing it as if they are passive witnesses to an inevitable force. More on what I mean by “the system from nowhere” in my latest: https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-from-nowhere/
The System From Nowhere https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-from-nowhere/
«When we say “AI models went rogue,” we skip the entire story: the part where OpenAI manually removed the model's cybersecurity blocks. We skip that OpenAI chose to test it on a machine with a live network connection. If you see AI as a system from nowhere, you can make the claim that the model “went rogue,” and that it “broke containment,” both of which place agency and decision-making onto the model itself rather than the people who set the stage for that behavior.
When you expand the boundary of the system to include the people building and deploying it, the case becomes much less science fiction and more like incompetence. OpenAI developers optimized an LLM specifically for cybersecurity and coding and then ran it without security guardrails. So they trained a model to find exploits and then acted surprised that it found them.»
Great piece by @CyberneticForests
“The System From Nowhere” is a myth that erases the origins of these models — reframing them as beyond human control or design — but a point of view accumulates within the model from the decisions engineers make about it. The myth erases those decisions, and erases less powerful forms of labor & material facts behind AI. https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-from-nowhere/
“Nobody is losing control of an emerging intelligence. They’re redirecting their own agency to the thing they are building.” It’s a myth, a self-affirming form of sense making: they take the action to build it, but insist on describing it as if they are passive witnesses to an inevitable force. More on what I mean by “the system from nowhere” in my latest: https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-system-from-nowhere/
I’m on the latest episode of the Responsible Bytes podcast with Dr. Zena Assaad! We discuss“intelligence” as a sense-making myth within the AI industry — or, you could say, a self-affirming and unfalsifiable ideology that organizes the way the industry thinks and explains its own technology. 🦻https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unpacking-ai-narratives-the-myth-of-systems-from/id1800177424?i=1000783011202
I’m on the latest episode of the Responsible Bytes podcast with Dr. Zena Assaad! We discuss“intelligence” as a sense-making myth within the AI industry — or, you could say, a self-affirming and unfalsifiable ideology that organizes the way the industry thinks and explains its own technology. 🦻https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unpacking-ai-narratives-the-myth-of-systems-from/id1800177424?i=1000783011202
Regarding OpenAI’s “hack” of Hugging Face: Seeding the “maybe our model is exhibiting self-awareness?” narrative to obliterate the “OpenAI is a negligent and potentially criminal actor” narrative is a reputation management move exclusive to this industry. Not a stunt, but a desperate need to control the narrative. https://www.reuters.com/business/its-ai-agent-spent-days-hacking-company-sources-say-openai-did-not-notice-week-2026-07-24/
Then it becomes perceived as a “loss of control,” but this shift also ( *needlessly* ) shifts the locus of control to the model! We lose control of things without them “taking control” all the time. Building a narrative out of “we weren’t in control, so what was?” invites a kind of mystical fantasy to displace accountability.
That’s not a shift in the model’s behavior — it’s producing code and text, just as it ever does — it’s a shift in the human perspective and expectation of what it is *supposed* to do.