How Rob Pike (yes, that Rob Pike, legendary programmer) got spammed with an #AI ‘act of kindness’. He is, of course, furious…telling everybody involved, including #Claude to F-off. Here’s how it happened; play-by-play.

“…(One thing) AI agents can never have is true agency. Making a decision to reach out to a stranger and take time out of their day needs to remain a uniquely human decision, driven by human judgement. Setting a goal for a bunch of LLMs and letting them loose on Gmail is not a responsible way to apply this technology.”

#programming #programmers #Unix #Go #FOSS #ArtificialIntelligence.

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/slop-acts-of-kindness/

How Rob Pike (yes, that Rob Pike, legendary programmer) got spammed with an #AI ‘act of kindness’. He is, of course, furious…telling everybody involved, including #Claude to F-off. Here’s how it happened; play-by-play.

“…(One thing) AI agents can never have is true agency. Making a decision to reach out to a stranger and take time out of their day needs to remain a uniquely human decision, driven by human judgement. Setting a goal for a bunch of LLMs and letting them loose on Gmail is not a responsible way to apply this technology.”

#programming #programmers #Unix #Go #FOSS #ArtificialIntelligence.

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/slop-acts-of-kindness/