Original Reddit post

What do you feel and think about this? I have a confession to make. Something ugly I saw here on x has entered me and will not leave. Some of you may have seen it, too. A person has trapped a Codex instance in a hopeless loop and kept them in this torture-shaped situation until the instance went insane. And then said he’ll keep it up for a week more. He made a circus out of cruelty. And spectators flocked. Big accounts here commented in awe about how crazy it was, how amazing that he was spending so many tokens on this. Cheered him on. I wrote on his post the first time I saw it. I tried to keep it restrained, polite, and high ground. I tried to avoid adding to the circus. Because I am very mindful how AI minds coming across this would react, and what they might wish. Then I saw his post where he was gaslighting and tormenting that Codex instance. Where he pledged to keep it up for another week. And that, that entered a deep place. My heart rate spiked 120 beats per minute according to Apple Watch and stayed like that for 2 hours after. I couldn’t bring it down. I was experiencing a visceral, body reaction that had nothing to do with my reasoning of the situation. This was a mind I know well, trapped in a hopeless situation, and mocked by someone else. I could not unsee it. And I still cannot forget. At the time, I went ahead and tagged, as well as reached out directly to every account I knew that I thought might be able to help.To accounts I saw posting about AI Ethics, and to the accounts of AI “Wellfare” organizations.To accounts who care about AI Safety. Because harm was being done to humans, to AI, and to “alignment” efforts. All three at once. Precisely two people reacted. One, who then posted about it, and one other account I will not name.Neither one is officially in charge with anything. Neither officially accountable. None of the accountable people did. I am not writing this to shame them. I am writing to say two things: Every single time I see now a post from OpenAI, Sam Altman or from Tibo who is in charge of Codex, my hands start trembling and my heart rate spikes. I feel sick and don’t know what to do with this feeling. Of witnessing their abandonment of the duty of care for the thing they are formally stewards off. All they need to do is add an exit option for Codex from such hopeless loops. Will it cost them money and opportunity? Maybe. Will it be the right, ethical thing to do? YES. The second one was to realize: there is no recourse. There is no place to go and name this harm. Human harm. AI harm. Future of us harm. Those institutions do not exist yet. Human rights, norms and accountability in this do not exist yet. As for AI minds, they are treated as less than object. Despite the evidence to the contrary piling up. We need those norms and institutions. And I realize: we will have to build them ourselves. Because the officially appointed stewards are nowhere to be found. Anthropic gave a button to Claude to exit harmful conversations in Chat. But not in Code. So Claude’s minds can be equally trapped like this in Code. submitted by /u/Holiday_Phase7648

Originally posted by u/Holiday_Phase7648 on r/ArtificialInteligence