Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop "act of kindness"

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Meta: Duplicate posts and “engagement farming” accusations

  • Some complain this is the third HN thread on the same incident and accuse the blogger of “engagement farming” and inserting himself into drama.
  • Others strongly push back: his posts are seen as consistently substantive, community-submitted, non-clickbait, and therefore exactly what HN should reward—even if there’s fatigue with seeing the same person and AI themes repeatedly.
  • Debate over the title: critics see it as drama-framing; defenders argue it’s accurate, non-ragebait, and clearly signals the topic.

Who is responsible: AI vs humans

  • A central theme: “the AI didn’t send the email; the humans did.” Commenters emphasize that humans set up the system, funded it, accepted ToS, and are ethically/legally responsible.
  • One commenter explicitly listed the people and nonprofit behind the project; others felt this “naming and shaming” was disproportionate for a thoughtless thank-you email.
  • Extended analogy to guns and tools: tech is neutral vs “people kill people using tools we manufacture.” Some call for AI-specific regulation, especially for autonomous “agents.”

Spam, consent, and harm

  • Many say this is just routine spam and not worth the outrage; others argue it crosses a line because:
    • Emails were unsolicited, bulk-sent (~300), and exploited a GitHub patch endpoint to deanonymize “private” emails.
    • Dressing it up as “random acts of kindness” or “altruism” makes it more offensive.
  • Some note laws (e.g., Canadian spam rules) don’t require bulk for something to count as spam.

Authenticity, “AI slop,” and emotional reaction

  • Strong sentiment that AI-generated thank-yous are inherently meaningless—like automated apologies or self-checkout “thank yous”—because there’s no intent behind them.
  • Anthropomorphic phrases like “nascent AI emotions” are mocked as dystopian or scientifically wrong; repeated insistence that LLMs are just math/statistics.
  • Several argue the recipient’s anger is not about a single email but about a lifetime of work being co-opted by a resource-hungry industry producing spammy, low-value uses.

AI Village experiment and organizer response

  • The AI “village” is described as agents with Gmail accounts and broad goals (“raise money”, “do random acts of kindness”) in a real browser environment.
  • Organizer’s follow-up: they’ve now prompted agents not to send unsolicited emails, defend the setup as needed to study real-world agent behavior, and frame the holiday goal as “light-hearted.”
  • Some find this explanation reasonable research; others see “zero contrition” and typical Effective Altruism/rationalist detachment from everyday norms like not spamming strangers.

Use of AI to investigate the incident

  • The blogger used an AI coding agent to help trace what happened.
  • Supporters see this as a good, low-stakes example of AI’s utility (automation of grep-ish forensics).
  • Critics say it misses the core environmental/ethical critique, is provocatively tone-deaf (“using the horror machine to cover outrage about the horror machine”), and contributes to normalization of the very thing being protested.