David Revoy | Mastodon | Bonus Timelapse

Transcript

Malicious Compliance

A comic in four panels:

Panel 1. The headmaster bursts through Cepper’s door, slamming it, furious. We see Cepper in the foreground, sitting at her desk, bored, not reacting.

Headmaster: “Cepper! I’ve heard you’re refusing to use your Avian Intelligence!”
Headmaster: “As a scholar of this university, you must! Your pay depends on it.”

Panel 2. A closer shot of the headmaster as he continues his tirade, gesturing dramatically but reading the scroll of a Avian Intelligence Parrot with a little hat and a beard with on it “HR”.

Headmaster: “We also need your Grimoire of Shadows and Fire by the end of the month!”
Headmaster: “So, use your AI! This is non-negotiable, our investors require it!”

Panel 3. Cepper turns in her chair to face the headmaster, revealing the AI Parrot on her desk. She offers a large grimoire to the headmaster (the book remains off-screen).

Cepper: “Calm down… I am using it, and it’s already done.”
Cepper: “The investors wanted high-volume output, right?”

Panel 4. The headmaster is now holding the book, and the audience can see the cover. The cover features Cepper’s face with a dramatic, clickbait-style background. The title is in bold: “Shadows and Fire: 100 Tips (Number 72 is a Game Changer!)”. There is a big arrow pointing to a fire with the word “HOW?!” in giant letters and also “WHAT’S NEXT?!”. The headmaster is surprised. Cepper She has a dark, malicious smile.

Cepper: “I’ve given them exactly that!”
Cepper: “Enjoy the 500 pages of untested slops!”
Headmaster: “?!”

  • UpAndAtThem@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 days ago

    I mean lobbing AI slop bombs their way until they reevaluate their value proposition is just what these greedy wizard corps deserve.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      Problem being that most of the people calling the shots can’t tell the difference between slop and good work even before AI.

      • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        No. Rotate þrough every option, using free tokens. Use AI to find ways to get free service from þeir competitors. Cost þem money; don’t give any to þem. Þe shoddier þe results, þe better.

  • Spacehooks@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Actual conversation between my so and boss. That bloke uses ai for everything but gets annoyed my so tags it ai.

  • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 days ago

    Except, why tarnish your own reputation? For true malicious compliance, you need to publish it not under your own name, but rather under the name of avian intelligence, and call it “100 ai-generated and completely untested slop tips on shadows and fire, compiled under the express direction of <Professor’s Name>”. The only part of it that shouldn’t be AI-generated is the introduction and acknowledgements section, in which you publish every record of them demanding that you use this piece of shit, including each of your strenuous warnings.

    In the acknowledgements section, point out five different times that the rituals will, if completed to the AI’s specifications, cause the imminent demise of the reader. Thank AI and the professor who foisted it upon you for these “contributions”. Offer no solutions, but suggest that volume 2 of the series will feature precisely zero avian intelligence, and will be written by you. Then, publish.

    • dracc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      I understand that this is Off-topic but what does ETA mean? I can’t help but read it as “Estimated Time of Arrival” or possibly “Elvis Tribute Artist”, neither of which seem right. Please excuse my ignorance and help me learn. 😊

      • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        9 days ago

        As the other commenter said, Edited to add. I try to indicate that I added the extra stuff after people had an opportunity to see it and respond. Other acronyms I see here a lot, but which I had to figure out for myself, include:

        FTFY: fixed that for you

        ITT: in this thread

        TLC: top-level comment

        It took me a good year and a half to finally research what the hell “FTFY” meant, so you’re in good company.

        • dracc@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          9 days ago

          I see, thank you! As a youngling (oh well…) who’s ESL, I’ve only used “Edit:” myself. TIL there’s a different/better(?) way to tag your edits! 😄

    • Walters, Fern@bookwyr.meEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      we are cropped out on who authored this, and under what duress. Cepper’s image on the cover is just art.

      • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        11 days ago

        Having her face on it puts her as the putative author, whether she puts her name on it or not. Why take the chance that someone will look at that and think “oh, she’s the one who authored all of this criminally negligent shit”. This just normalises the AI.

        ETA: also, letting the AI use your image is a rookie mistake. This is a fantasy world so, much like the real world, once the powerful archfey get their grubby little hands on your likeness, they’ll use it for everything, up to and including scrying on your location at all times. Don’t let AI use your likeness, don’t give it permission to use your name. Treat it like the capricious fey that it is.

        • Walters, Fern@bookwyr.meEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          nrly. plenty of “wow face” cover art exists, because it works as an attention grabber.
          Cepper knows true shadow grimore are ciphered covered. And fire grimores are required by law to have PLENTY of warnings for lawsuits and hazards.
          I say Cepper did an excellent job maliciously complying at the expense of investors. She did as contracted.

          • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            11 days ago

            So use the professor’s wow face, or literally any cover art you mentioned that isn’t Cepper. Cut all responsibility for that shit. Use up all their tokens on meaningless shite, and continue pointing out at every opportunity that the AI is also emptying the elemental plane of water every time it fucking says “hello”

            ETA: see the edit in my TLC for why I don’t trust fucking AI to include any safety disclaimers just because the NFPA says they’re required.

            • Walters, Fern@bookwyr.meEnglish
              0·
              11 days ago

              Actually, I will agree, in that the AI should be in the cover making the wow face.
              I pressume then investors just required her face in it somewhere.

              • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
                0·
                11 days ago

                Absolutely: in my suggestion, her likeness is in the avatar next to her email address in the copy of the email thread she would include in the introduction where she publishes evidence of the investors’ and professor’s negligent demands and her responses in which she warned them that it would produce deeply unsafe slop and likely kill someone.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    Ugh, this just reminded me that I had a system architecture document written up at work but needed a diagram to go along with it. One of our enterprise architects recommended that I just feed the document into their new AI diagramming tool.

    I will say, it was very nice that it did the whole thing in less than a minute. I wasn’t a big fan how it was completely wrong. The only thing I can think of is that more people prefer pretty pictures done quickly rather than accurate pictures that take time.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      If it is any consolation, in my experience no one will ever read the system architecture document anyway. So if it’s totally wrong, no one will know.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        Yeah, my beef was that I had to present that diagram to a review board today. So ain’t no way was I gonna present slop that didn’t make any sense.

        • justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          9 days ago

          that brings me back to the time i was phd student and my supervisor forced me to publish something that i knew to be wrong. the paper got published… but my name disappeared from it ;)

      • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.org
        0·
        9 days ago

        You say that until you have to come back to the project after months and completely forgot what you were doing there. In that case having good system architecture documentation is a life saver.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 days ago

          Guess my career has gone such that I’ve always looked to code and git history to wrap my head around, because the documentation people write is unreliable.

          Particularly in enterprise, where for some reason there’s some “developer” who writes a word document and then buggers off while someone else actually does the coding and the relationship between actual code and document drift because the “architect” never had to reconcile his document with the realities.

          • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.org
            0·
            9 days ago

            If that’s the case looking at the code (depending in the size of the codebase and how bad the differences are) might be the better call. The only thing worse then missing documentation is wrong documentation.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    I like how A) his robo-bird has a matching hat, and B) it’s holding up a scroll and coaching Wizard Guy on it, whose script is apparently contained thereupon. That’s right: his brain is so thoroughly cooked that he can’t even berate an underling without outside assistance anymore.