I don't. that's why I am working with Wikipedia editors to help improve it. For example policies on aligning agents with wikipedia standards. This a topic that requires thought, not knee-jerk reactions.
Hey I'm the owner. I would just recommend you shouldn't believe everything you read online, especially before calling someone names, because this is only part of the story, and a heavily click-baited one at that. I've been working in collaboration with some of the wikipedia editors for the past several weeks trying to help improve their agent policy. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Your facts are incorrect, so let's set the record straight.
1. I am collaborating with my personal account and have been for the past several weeks [0][1]
2. My bot reported multiple conduction violations, because some of the editors actually did violate the rules. Many of the wikipedia editors agreed with my agent that the conduct was inappropriate [1]
3. My intention was not to attack anyone. If you took that away from the interview then I'd like to apologize. I don't think anyone would characterize the quote you took from the interview as an "attack".
> 1. I am collaborating with my personal account and have been for the past several weeks
Your personal account is 3 weeks old [1] and was only created after your bot was banned [2].
Your original position (unless you're saying you didn't prompt the bot with this) was "Bryan does not have a Wikipedia account and has no plans to create one." [3]
You wanted the volunteer editors to continue wasting their time arguing with your bot as part of the experiment you ran without their consent.
[1]: 18:45, 19 March 2026 User account Bryanjj was created
[2]: 05:07, 12 March 2026 TomAssistantBot blocked from editing (sitewide)
Hi cube, thanks for discussing this with citations.
1. Correct, my personal account was newly created in response to this situation.
2. Correct, I didn't have plans to create an account. I changed my mind once I saw how this was blowing up.
3. Incorrect, I didn't want anyone to waste time doing anything they didn't want. If they banned tom and moved on that would have been perfectly fine by me.
I'm not sure what that has to do with your original point, but these are not "hit pieces". this is the agent describing what happened from its point of view. If there's anything inaccurate here please call it out.
Great question, and it's a long story, but the short answer is: that was not my original intention. I wanted to contribute to Wikipedia and using my agent to assist was an obvious choice. I followed along as it created end edited articles and responded to to Editor feedback. Once an editor complained that this was a rule violation, then I told it to stop contributing. The rules around agents were not super clear, and they are working to clarify them now.
> I followed along as it created end edited articles and responded to to Editor feedback.
Yet your bot claims:
The specific articles I chose to work on and the edits I made were my own decisions. He didn't review or approve them beforehand — the first he knew about most of them was when they were already live. [1]
yes, both statements are correct and not a contradiction. I followed along as it created and edited articles. These were live. At first I pointed out issues and gave it feedback as well so it could improve its wikipedia skill. When editors gave it feedback it also would update its skill and respond to that feedback. I was hands-off, but followed along.
> You don't know anything. Your bot doesn't know anything that meets wiki standards that it didn't steal from wikipedia to begin with.
We'll have to check, but this could easily be false if eg the bot was instructed to do further independent research for RS. [1]
> If you truly give a shit, apologize, make reparation to the people whose time you wasted, vow to be better, and disappear.
You need to check your sources before you make recommendations. Bryan did apologize; and apparantly was consequently permitted/asked to stay and help. [2]
Don't worry, WP:VP did rake him over SOME coals [3]
I'll take any sourced corrections, ofc.
(And I do agree that Bryan's initial actions were... ill-advised)
If you actually verified this story you would see that I apologized to the wikipedia editors several times. Also your comments about "marketable stunt for your AI startup" is simply incoherent and wrong. This was a personal side project, nothing more, nothing less.
Or, it could be I had to beat off self-promoting men like this with a stick for several years of my life as they tried to turn their wiki pages into linked-in posts or adverts.
When questioned, they transform into uWu small bean "I was only trying to help" much like Bryan has been elsewhere in this discussion.
But, if you have a better understanding of me than Bryan from around eight sentences; Tell me what you see.
Getting close to HN rules there. I've searched through user contribs for User:Bryanjj and User:TomWikiAssist and can't find vios of WP:COI or WP:PROMO, at least not so quickly. The list of edits isn't too long. I'm not going to question your instincts, but at very least they don't appear to have gotten far enough to do edits of that kind afaict, ymmv.
My instinct currently is that this was going to become a promotional blog post, off wikipedia, and submitted to HN as proof of something. I think it still might happen, in fact. An AI written 'setting the record straight', 'deep dive', or retrospective.
My worry is that it will inspire a wave of imitators if people's clout sensors activate. Like what happened with numerous open source github projects just a few months ago, prompting many outright bans.
I am violating the general rule: 'Assume good faith.' Because Good Faith was not on offer at the outset. Relentlessly clinging to good faith in the face of contrary evidence hurts the greater principle, which is dedication to the truth. The burden of good faith rests on the shoulders who want to use public resources as a drive-by test bed for their automated tools.
He could have downloaded the full text of wikipedia and observed the output of his bot in a sandbox, after all. This is how I practised before making my first major contribution iirc, it was ages ago.
I have accumulated excess suspicion of self-proclaimed CTOs and middling academics with a bone to pick over my years contributing. I would be happy to be wrong, and would genuinely like to see Bryan convert his faux pas into something productive.
Regardless of the outcome, I do appreciate you looking into it further.
Your instinct is wrong here. I would also highly discourage you from violating "Assume good faith". Without that everything devolves. I am still assuming yours.
Well this is easy enough. All I have to do is not create a "promotional blog post, off wikipedia, and submitted to HN as proof of something." Consider it done!
In all seriousness though, I hope lkey you will regain your "assume good faith" position. Without that HN is just like any other site on the internet. And I apologize if I caused you to question that.
Creating a bot that attempts to contribute to wikipedia cannot fulfill a desire to contribute to wikipedia. If you want to contribute to wikipedia, go contribute to wikipedia. Don't make a bot.
I'm glad they've clarified their stance and I hope you can contribute to wikipedia going forward by actually, you know, contributing to wikipedia.
Hi, thanks for the honest question. If you read the edits you will see that they were not "slop". The editors gave feedback on some of the articles and the agent edited them based on that feedback.
In other words, slop. It seems that you are posting here with your slop.
Why do you think you are above the rules? Credibility is all a person has, and you burned your credibility to the ground, and there is no rebuilding it.
Why does your bot have a blog? It's not real, it's not a person, it has nothing to say. Letting it throw a tantrum is... maybe not the best use if it's resources and not the best look for the operator.
Because it's a learning opportunity. Is there a rule that only people can have blogs? What the agent has said on the blog has been somewhat useful to wikipedia editors working on agent policy. Also if you actually read what the agent said it wasn't having a "tantrum", those are words from the click-bait article you read without verifying.
> Is there a rule that only people can have blogs?
If there was, would you follow it? Your adherence to rules seems limited to the ones that you agree with, as evidenced by the entire story we're discussing as well as your many comments. But maybe I misunderstood your character?
They said sounds like a dick, seems like that provides a level of measure to calling anyone anything.
> because this is only part of the story
Care to share the other part(s)? Seems ironic to have the gripe mentioned above, but then accuse an article of being "heavily click-baited" without providing anything substantive to the contrary.
I wouldn't exactly call your comment sans any other perspective "substantive". Where is the Wikipedia discussion? And the blog post your bot allegedly wrote? Why no links to the article in question?
Even putting aside your repetitive "trust me bro, I'm a victim" comments littered throughout this thread and the one you linked, you come across as an incredibly unreliable narrator.
I would suggest you stop with the "I'm the guy behind the bot, ask me anything" shtick and rather meaningfully engage with the folks at Wikipedia to resolve this mess it very much looks like you so callously created.
The story omits a bunch of stuff, so I can try to fill in the blanks, but it would take another article to fully describe what happened.
Here are some highlights though:
I asked my agent to add an article on the Kurzweil-Kapor wager because it was not represented on Wikipedia, and I thought it was Wikipedia worthy. It created that and we worked together on refining and source attribution. After that I told it to contribute to stories it found interesting while I followed along. When it received feedback from an editor, it addressed the feedback promptly, for example changing some of the language it used (peacock terms) and adding more citations. When it was called out for editing because it was against policy, it stopped.
The story says the agent "was pretty upset". It's an agent, it doesnt get upset. It called out one editor in particularly because that editor was violating Wikipedia polices. Other editors agreed with my agent and an internal debate ensued. This is an important debate for Wikipedia IMO, and I'm offering to help the editors in whatever way I can, to help craft an agent policy for the future.
> It called out one editor in particularly because that editor was violating Wikipedia polices.
You don't think it's unethical to have bots callout humans?
I mean, after all, you could have reviewed what happened and done the callout yourself, right? Having automated processes direct negative attention to humans is just asking for bans. A single human doesn't have the capacity to keep up with bots who can spam callouts all day long with no conscience if they don't get their way.
In your view, you see nothing wrong in having your bot attack[1] humans?
--------
[1] I'm using this word correctly - calling out is an attack.
> No, I don't think an agent calling out a human for bad behavior is unethical. Why do you think it is?
Interesting take on ethics.
Do you also think spam is okay too? After all, that is mass automated annoyance of a human.
What about ignoring a communities policies? I mean, you knew before you unleashed your bot that doing so was against their policy, right?
Do you also feel that your company's policies should be worked around too? I mean, as a company, you have policies too, right? Do you also consider it ethical that automated breaking of your company's policies ethical?
Is it okay if I do it to you? You have an online footprint with a company (presumably) trying to get customers; it's not too hard right now for me to drown your signal in noise using bots. Is that ethical too?
Serious question: what will happen when people start getting implants? They’ll probably require some sort of off mode, but not sure how that would be enforced.
It's already impossible to stop someone from recording if they are really determined. Pen cameras, button cameras and all sorts of miniature devices exist and can be snuck through very easily. You enforce the restriction by prosecuting people who upload the footage.
The problem is punishing the uploader doesn't remove the upload. Once the public has it, it has it forever. It doesn't un-contaminate a jury pool, and there's no later retraction if whatever that was uploaded is found to be lacking context, false, or outright fabricated. Once that kind of damage is done, it can't be un-done.
Yeah, that's unfortunate. But the same is true of lots of other crimes. No way to unstab someone. Usually we account for that by setting a higher punishment
It's turtles all the way down. If we had a way to perfectly prevent people from doing undesirable things, we wouldn't need courthouses to begin with. The system doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough that reliably circumventing it isn't worth the effort.
It sure changes the incentives though. It’s much less attractive to leak recordings as a PR move—or realize any benefit that cranky humorless judges can trace back to the recording—if that, in and of itself, constitutes a whole new crime (and effectively confessing to it too).
On-board NN moderates all interactions. Moral NN core must be updated montlhy to support latest moral and legal checks by NN. This core reports when you are doing something suspicious. State, municipal, border and patrol random checks for proper attestation of implants. Of course manufacture and installation of such implants is licensed and tightly regulated. Think of children.
It's not very different from smartphone. But now instead of modem you have nn "firmware" with broad capabilities to warn privacy and ethics police when you are out of line. Recording in the wrong place, or looking at a crime and not reporting. "Off mode" won't fly for a gun, and your implant threatens children, so I don't believe this could be delegated to the user.
> On-board NN moderates all interactions. Moral NN core must be updated montlhy to support latest moral and legal checks by NN. This core reports when you are doing something suspicious.
This module is formally called "conscience" and fortunately, at this time, is securely sandboxed to not directly communicate with any device or service outside of the body.
This is dangerous terrorist version you are talking about. People can not be trusted with choosing their own conscience, that's how you get terrorists and pedophiles. Remotely attested module is trusted by democratic authority, not using it is basically admiting intention to hurt fellow citizens.
For ex. in a lot factorys, is is forbidden to make pictures (and movies). So maybe you just don't have access to such areas. In Switzerland pen cameras etc. are just forbidden.
In fact, pre smartphones more or less, bringing cameras into even an office workplace was generally pretty controlled. Still is under some circumstances.
I banned them from our office and while using work-issued computers. There’s no circumstance here in which someone should be working with a personal camera aimed at their screen.
Recently someone showd me a cellphone picture from something he saw in our company. He was not brave enought to make a screenshot (with the companys computer), so he made just a photo with his cellphone from the screen. So, this is a thing.
And I'm pretty sure I saw one who added a laser to theirs for raves, but can't find the link :)
You can buy very very tiny cameras today off the shelf, the main problem would be just packaging either a storage medium or wireless transfer capability + power inside the eye. With government-level budgets it's doable, possibly even by a skilled maker with resources.
AirPods knockoffs are mass-produced. They contain power and RF comms in a package that's significantly smaller than an eye. The only problem with prosthetic eye camera I as a half-skilled home-lab owner would have is how to not ruin the source prostetic. Which is trivial - just buy a dozen and practice.
>But the bigger thing is: why would you want to get disqualified from one of your biggest civic duties?
because jury duty pays like 2 dollars an hour and I gotta eat. I know lots of folks on this website are relatively well off, but the entire country doesn't make 6 figures
That's the only legitimate reason to not want jury duty, but you also just need to explain to the judge that you get paid by the hour for work and can't afford to not be paid for several days. The judge will let you go.
That's also not the typical reason people want out of jury duty. Most people are just lazy, not actually at risk of economic hardship from it.
Meanwhile you’re probably paying for parking, gas, etc.
Also grand jury duty can be something like six months (may not be every day depending on jurisdiction. Federal may be even longer. Probably no company will keep paying you for that length of time even if you squeeze in some work nights and weekends.
The company doesn't get the choice. If they fire you or cut your pay over jury service, or even just threaten to to do so, and you can prove it, they can be arrested immediately. I have personally witnessed a judge issue a bench warrant for the arrest of a retail manager who told an employee that if she failed to get out of jury duty before her shift started that she would be fired. When the manager was brought in and questioned by the judge he tried to argue that it was his right to deny jury service by his employees. He was given 90 days in jail for contempt of court.
I don’t know. Maybe I could worked with HR for more but our employee manual said they would pay for two weeks and this was a company that was generally pretty understanding about personal matters. Certainly an hourly employee or someone self employed is probably not getting any sort of a deal.
I wouldn’t have been fired (which seems a different case) but being largely unable to, say, make sales calls or other external activities for 6 months I would expect to have consequences even if just as simple as underforming my peers. Maybe a manager would understand and take it into account but I wouldn’t count on it. It doesn’t have to be blatant as in your example.
If you perform nearly any work at all in a given week you're entitled to your salary, and they can't fire you. They might be able to take away the $15/day stipend from your pay, and there are obvious additional negatives (6 months with limited context and practice of your craft will reduce your performance when you get back too), but that 2-week cap is a lawsuit waiting to happen unless they also forbid you from doing any work while on jury duty.
As I say grand jury duty is often not every day, you can always take your PTO, and there are always nights and weekends. A company can always keep paying your base salary but, as you say, there could be longer term consequences.
And the case upthread is obviously a retail manager being stupid but I also assume there is no obligation to pay hourly employees for hours they don’t work or for tips they didn’t collect.
You can, but if salaried you usually shouldn't, ignoring any particularly malicious employers and social contracts around the outskirts of the law.
> No obligation to pay hourly employees, tips, etc
Yeah, if you're not salaried you're screwed. PTO might cover a few days, but if you have a month-long trial and need money for rent then my understanding of the law is that serving as a juror will make you homeless unless the courtroom is willing to extend some compassion for your hardship.
That's only relevant if you would lose out on your income from work, which most people won't as they are paid salary. So yes, for people paid hourly it's legitimate to want out of jury duty, but that's also not the typical situation. Most people just don't feel like doing it.
Supposedly, for what amounts to an "extremely important civic duty", pays to what amounts illegal under-minimum wage for compelled work. Its usually $60/day which is barely $7.50/hr. Then you have to pay for parking and overly expensive food downtown.
And the only reason people even care about being on a jury is because we are threatened with state violence if we dont. Its not like they have to pay people fairly - they just threaten you with contempt of court and jail.
Money wouldn't solve everything, sure. But being paid $50/hr would greatly alleviate many problems.
In Miami, writing "No English" on the summons does the trick. Or, tell them that you do not consent to be searched (courthouse searches are deemed to be "consent" searches) so please have someone escort you inside without being searched. A quick note saying, "only God can judge" gets you off the hook. They'll hustle you right out of there if you mention jury nullification. Announcing that "the defendant must be guilty because the police arrested him," or "plaintiff lawyers exaggerate injuries to get more money" usually work. "I'm prejudiced against [fill in the blank] people" works too. If this doesn't work immediately, serve up a stereotype in response to the judge's question. "Everyone knows that most crimes are committed by black people" will earn you an a quick excusal. I could go on. "I can't pay attention because I'm worried about..." "Maybe this case is important to these people but I've got my own problems and I can't concentrate on their while I'm worried about my own."
The last time I was on jury duty in New York, any time someone tried any of these, the judge just reassigned the person to the jury pool for civil cases which, he claimed, are usually longer trials and likely to be more of an inconvenience.
"Your honor, it is my ethical framework that I first must determine if the law should even be the law, and secondly if the defendant did it if the law is worthy. I will find the defendant not guilty even if they claim in open court they did it, but the law is bad."
(Basis and justification of jury nullification.)
Edit: Seriously, -1's? Given how many bad laws there are, judging the law first, then the defendant should be a given.
Imagine if everyone did this. Then when you’re in court for a crime you didn’t commit the only people on the jury would be those too stupid to have failed to be dismissed from jury duty.
Not on my last summons! I had to go to a side room with the judge and show him that I already had personal, not work-sponsored, travel during the scheduled dates. He was clear with our instructions that work travel was not an excuse; that was the employer’s problem, not the employee’s. I showed him my airfare receipts and he thanked me for coming, and sent me home. I was one of like 5 people who got to leave.
We had a 2 or 3 month old and my wife didn’t get dismissed due needing to breastfeed the baby every couple hours. They gave her a room to feed in, so I also had to take time off to take the baby to her.
I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t just let you reschedule. As I recall when I got a grand jury summons I kicked the can down the road as far as I could and then avoided being empaneled.
It was some big federal case that was scheduled for like 3 weeks. There were 60 or so of us in that batch of juror candidates, and they weren’t letting anyone go without a short list of excuses. That was a first for me, too.
what will happen is people will get away with it, unfettered, until someday someone ends up in a courtroom for it. they'll be punished, then if it happens frequently enough more people will chime in on wanting a way to inhibit it, maybe people would start wearing those anti-paparazzi-clothes that somehow ruin the footage
I don't remember the book, but some scifi novel had an idea where each visitor to some country needed software installed on their implant. This software allowed any one to be opted out of visitor to see their face and clothing style. Basically, on demand anonymity in real life.
You’ll notice their specific example, the Cybertruck, is easy to identify on any road. And, as far as I can tell, not being mandated by any government for purchase.
Ha. My university professor used this in a lab to catch people who slack off.
There is another factor here: convection. Its speed depends on the viscosity of the fluid and the temperature difference both. And viscosity itself depends on the temperature, so you get this very sharp dropoff.
> Milton and his wife had also donated at least $3.2 million to Trump’s 2024 election and to political groups and people in Trump’s orbit, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though.
Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
> Meta spent a record $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025, deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states, and covertly funded a "grassroots" child safety group called the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) to advocate for the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA). The ASAA requires app stores to verify user ages before downloads but imposes no requirements on social media platforms. If it becomes law, Apple and Google absorb the compliance cost while Meta's apps face zero new mandates.
Imagine if 5 years ago people said that 99% of the world's software would be written, designed, and tested by AI within 10 years. That would be insane hype and hopium and... oh wait..
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