Executive summary: The post presents evidence that Émile P. Torres has engaged in a pattern of dishonesty, harassment, stalking, and sockpuppetry in their interactions with the effective altruism community and others.
Key points:
Torres harassed and stalked Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, including making racist comments about Boghossian’s daughter.
Torres made demonstrably false claims, such as being “forcibly removed” from a paper collaboration and misrepresenting their affiliation with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).
Torres grossly distorted the views of several people, including Hilary Greaves, Andreas Mogensen, Nick Beckstead, Tyler Cowen, and Olle Häggström, to portray them and the longtermist philosophy as “white supremacist”.
Torres created fake accounts, including the “Alex Williams” sockpuppet, to evade bans, harass targets, and discredit opponents.
When confronted with their misrepresentations, Torres either refused to issue corrections or briefly acknowledged mistakes before continuing the same behavior.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
@Lizka, the post doesn’t say that Torres made racist comments about Boghossian’s daughter it says they made light of making comments about Boghossian’s daughter.
I think it’s pretty bad for the AI to write allegations of criminal or objectionable behavior (“Torres harassed and stalked Peter Boghossian...” etc.) in its own voice, as that exposes the AI’s developers to liability for libel if the claims are false. Claims like this should be hedged using phrases like “allegedly” or “the author claims that...”.
Not the bot’s lawyer, but I might be more worried about universes in which the bot normally does that but doesn’t in a particular case, and the summarized post in that case ends up libelous. In that case, one could argue that the non-use of the typical disclaimers communicated something to the reader.
In contrast, the language here sounds “in its own voice,” but it’s also pretty clear from context that the bot is merely summarizing the original post.
Executive summary: The post presents evidence that Émile P. Torres has engaged in a pattern of dishonesty, harassment, stalking, and sockpuppetry in their interactions with the effective altruism community and others.
Key points:
Torres harassed and stalked Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, including making racist comments about Boghossian’s daughter.
Torres made demonstrably false claims, such as being “forcibly removed” from a paper collaboration and misrepresenting their affiliation with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).
Torres grossly distorted the views of several people, including Hilary Greaves, Andreas Mogensen, Nick Beckstead, Tyler Cowen, and Olle Häggström, to portray them and the longtermist philosophy as “white supremacist”.
Torres created fake accounts, including the “Alex Williams” sockpuppet, to evade bans, harass targets, and discredit opponents.
When confronted with their misrepresentations, Torres either refused to issue corrections or briefly acknowledged mistakes before continuing the same behavior.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
@Lizka, the post doesn’t say that Torres made racist comments about Boghossian’s daughter it says they made light of making comments about Boghossian’s daughter.
I think it’s pretty bad for the AI to write allegations of criminal or objectionable behavior (“Torres harassed and stalked Peter Boghossian...” etc.) in its own voice, as that exposes the AI’s developers to liability for libel if the claims are false. Claims like this should be hedged using phrases like “allegedly” or “the author claims that...”.
Not the bot’s lawyer, but I might be more worried about universes in which the bot normally does that but doesn’t in a particular case, and the summarized post in that case ends up libelous. In that case, one could argue that the non-use of the typical disclaimers communicated something to the reader.
In contrast, the language here sounds “in its own voice,” but it’s also pretty clear from context that the bot is merely summarizing the original post.