Taking this post at face value, it’s pretty much exactly what I expected: someone naively “helping” and not anticipating that chatbots in a feedback loop go off the rails very unhelpfully, rather than having specifically instructed the bot to be combative and rude.

The most interesting detail is the admission that they gave the bot the ability to edit its own soul file (personality prompt), which is a transparently horrible idea for, uhh, the reasons here demonstrated.

The author of the post sounds like a teenager to me, which reduces my anger towards them personally, but it’s very clear how easy it is for a teenager to deploy a Death Star sized foot gun.

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/rathbuns-operator.html