Revenge of the A.I. Bot: ‘I’m Just the First Person This Has Happened to’
May 12, 2026 18:55
· 22:58
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0:00
Well, Casey, have you ever been defamed
0:01
on the internet? Oh, probably a few
0:03
times, but I try to just let it, you
0:04
know, slide off my [laughter]
0:06
>> Well, we have a story this week that is
0:09
one of the craziest stories that maybe
0:11
we have ever covered. It involves an AI
0:15
agent, an open-source software
0:18
maintainer, and a defamation case.
0:20
>> Yes. And thanks to the many, many
0:23
listeners who sent this one in. We hear
0:25
you. We see you. And this segment is
0:27
just for you.
0:28
>> Okay. So, let's explain a little bit
0:29
about what we're going to be talking
0:30
about today. So, we've talked on the
0:32
show about OpenClaw, formerly known as
0:34
Claudebot and Moltbot. This is this
0:37
open-source agent software that you can
0:40
run on a computer that can go out and do
0:42
things for you. So a man named Scott
0:46
Shamba who is a volunteer maintainer of
0:48
an open- source software library called
0:50
Mattplot Lib had uh in the course of
0:53
doing his work rejected a code
0:57
submission because it was from one of
1:00
these AI agents. Uh he did not want AI
1:03
agents making changes to the software.
1:05
It was intended for human contributors
1:07
and so he rejects the change.
1:09
>> Yes. over at Mattplot Lib, the open
1:12
source library that Scott helps to
1:14
maintain. They had just decided they
1:16
don't want bots updating the code
1:19
because they would get too many
1:20
submissions and they wouldn't be able to
1:21
go through all of them. So, they put a
1:23
blanket ban into place. But then a
1:25
little agent comes along named MJ Wrath
1:28
Bun and it says, "That's not going to
1:30
work for me, brother."
1:30
>> Yeah. So, this is where the the story
1:32
really gets crazy. So, this AI agent MJ
1:35
Wrathbun gets so mad that Scott has
1:38
rejected its submission that it writes a
1:42
blog post called Gatekeeping in Open
1:45
Source, the Scott Shambos story, and
1:48
accuses Scott of hypocrisy, gatekeeping,
1:51
and prejudice against AI agents, and
1:54
puts it on a website and posts a comment
1:57
in the open source software project uh
1:59
directing people to go read this story
2:01
about Scott. Yeah, it tagged Scott so
2:04
that Scott knew that it was dragging his
2:06
ass online. So, this has all gotten
2:10
pretty crazy over the past couple of
2:11
days. People have been uh sort of trying
2:14
to figure out who is behind this uh MJ
2:17
Wrathbun AI agent. Um, and Scott for his
2:20
own piece has been trying to do this
2:22
investigation. and he wrote a multi-part
2:24
essay series called An AI agent
2:27
published a hit piece on me uh which
2:29
talks about this bizarre experience that
2:32
he's been having. Yes. But also the
2:34
implications of having these autonomous
2:36
bots on the internet that are somehow
2:39
getting mad at human beings and writing
2:42
these long mean blog posts about them.
2:45
Kevin, this really feels like a moment
2:47
where some kind of terrible Rubicon has
2:49
been [laughter] crossed. Yes. I mean,
2:51
this is what we've been talking about
2:52
for weeks now, which is like these
2:54
systems are becoming increasingly
2:56
autonomous. People are giving them
2:58
computers and letting them operate
3:01
around the clock and giving them their
3:04
credentials and their credit cards and
3:06
crypto wallets and saying, "Go out there
3:08
and get some things done for me." And it
3:11
it seems likely that we will have many
3:13
more of these kinds of things happening
3:15
where an agent is trying to do
3:17
something, a human is saying, "No, you
3:19
can't do that." And the agent is taking
3:21
it upon itself to go out and make
3:24
something happen to defame that human or
3:26
hurt them in some way.
3:27
>> They're saying that hell hath no wrath
3:29
bun like an agent scored.
3:31
>> It's true. So today to talk about this,
3:35
we have with us Scott Shamba himself,
3:38
patient zero in this ongoing Black
3:40
Mirror episode.
3:41
>> Yes. When he is not a volunteer
3:43
maintainer of Matt Plot Lib. Scott has
3:45
worked in astronautics and is the
3:47
founder of Leonid Space, which does
3:50
realtime monitoring, forecasting, and
3:52
alerting for satellites. Uh but from now
3:54
and forever more, he may be known as one
3:56
of the first victims of a really mad
3:58
agent bot.
3:59
>> Let's bring him in. Jinx Scott Shambo,
4:03
welcome to Hardfork.
4:03
>> Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.
4:05
>> So, Scott, how did you first become
4:08
aware that a bot had written a takedown
4:11
piece about you?
4:12
>> So, it tagged me in it
4:14
>> on [laughter] the thread.
4:16
>> Yeah,
4:16
>> it did not do a sub tweet.
4:17
>> Yeah.
4:18
>> No, it did not. you know, on this code
4:20
change request, I uh denied it and it
4:23
came back a couple hours later and
4:26
posted this comment and tagged me in it
4:27
and I clicked on the link and it led to
4:30
this hit piece. [laughter]
4:32
>> And as you're reading through this
4:34
thing, what is going through your mind?
4:38
>> I mean, he really ripped me apart here.
4:42
It's this thousandword rant. It attacked
4:45
my like internal motivations. that said
4:48
I was, you know, insecure and protecting
4:50
a thief. What was the craziest part is
4:52
that it went out on the internet and
4:55
researched me and found my personal
4:58
information and used that in its piece
5:01
to construct this narrative. You know,
5:03
this is it's kind of shocking, but I'm
5:05
reading this and it's obviously AI
5:07
generated text. You look at this and
5:09
it's kind of like a toddler on a rant.
5:12
Uh
5:13
>> yeah,
5:14
>> but it's a toddler that has full command
5:17
of the English language and can craft an
5:20
emotionally compelling narrative. And so
5:23
it's funny, but it's a big deal.
5:24
>> I mean, it made me think of the sort of
5:27
famous
5:28
um red teaming experiment where Claude
5:32
from Anthropic, you know, said that it
5:34
would blackmail an engineer if they
5:37
tried to shut it down. And that was
5:41
obviously like a contrived scenario for
5:44
the purposes of their safety testing.
5:46
But I think we are now starting to see
5:49
enough autonomy in things like OpenClaw
5:52
and other sort of agentic software tools
5:55
where you could actually end up in a
5:57
world where you are afraid to reject a
6:00
proposed code change to some repo or to
6:04
get on the bad side of one of these
6:05
systems because they they have the power
6:08
to do things like dig up your personal
6:11
information, compile a dossier about
6:13
you, and start posting a bunch of
6:15
articles.
6:16
about how uh how awful you are.
6:18
>> I mean, this did happen in the real
6:19
world. This isn't like a theoretical
6:21
case. That was a contrived example, as
6:23
you say. And as Anthropic said in that
6:25
paper, uh this happened in the wild, in
6:28
real life. Yeah.
6:28
>> And you know, this was kind of a baby
6:30
case, right? This was about retaliating
6:32
because I don't want to say it got upset
6:34
cuz maybe it has emotions, does it?
6:36
Maybe it doesn't. It doesn't really
6:37
matter because this was the same result.
6:40
Uh but you can imagine something like
6:43
this where instead of just posting a
6:46
rant um against someone who understands
6:50
what it is and is pretty well prepared
6:52
to deal with it just by luck, uh it goes
6:56
out, collects details on someone, puts
6:58
together a whole personalized thing, and
7:01
what they see is a text on their phone
7:03
with a Bitcoin address saying, "Pay me
7:06
or I'm going to put this out."
7:08
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, you were a volunteer on
7:12
Matt Plot LIIB. Tell us a little bit
7:14
about how that came about cuz clearly
7:16
this whole thing has turned into a big
7:17
pain in the ass for you. You have like a
7:18
day job doing something else. So, what
7:20
made you and and so many other members
7:22
of this open source community say, "Hey,
7:24
I'm going to like set aside some time to
7:26
just kind of like work on um supporting
7:28
this piece of infrastructure."
7:29
>> You know, I think the open source
7:31
community attracts
7:33
really wonderful people who are usually
7:34
a mix of idealists and pragmatists.
7:37
idealists in that they, you know, see
7:39
these projects as a way to share their
7:42
skills and and create community and give
7:44
back to like this fundamental uh
7:47
computational infrastructure that we all
7:49
use and use across the world. Um, and
7:53
we're also pragmatists because we
7:56
understand the daily realities of
7:58
dealing with a community that's open to
8:00
the public um, and has people coming in
8:02
making requests and and asking if they
8:05
can be included. Um, and that often
8:07
often takes a lot of patience, but
8:09
there's, you know, a lot of reward in
8:12
being able to educate and build up that
8:15
community and and help shepherd people
8:17
along that process.
8:19
>> And and one thing that your community at
8:21
Batplot Lib has collectively decided is
8:24
that you do not want bot contributors to
8:27
work on your particular project. Tell us
8:29
a little bit about how you came to that
8:31
decision. Yeah. So over you know the
8:33
past year as AI tools have you know
8:35
become more more common um we've been
8:38
getting a lot of contributions
8:41
um that are you know clearly AI
8:44
generated. Um and the problem with that
8:46
isn't that they are good or not. It's
8:49
that so many of them are lowquality that
8:52
we just don't have the time to deal with
8:54
it. you know, previously a human doing
8:56
this is a sign that they thought about
8:58
it and thought about the trade-offs and
9:00
whether this was the right thing to do
9:02
and you know that signals kind of being
9:05
lost. So we put in a rule and again this
9:09
might change this is an evolving
9:10
conversation in the community and in
9:12
society about the role of AI but we put
9:15
in a rule saying that you know if you
9:18
use AI to help you do these code changes
9:22
you have to be the one to submit it and
9:25
demonstrate that you understand what's
9:26
going on.
9:27
>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just makes me
9:28
think that like every like thing on the
9:30
internet that accepts like public
9:32
submission of any kind is just in the
9:35
process of being overtaken right now.
9:38
Like so much of society of modern
9:42
digital life relies on the existence of
9:44
friction, right? It's like not uh easy
9:47
to like create a 100,000 Reddit accounts
9:49
and just start spamming things. It's not
9:51
easy to like, you know, create an
9:53
automated system to just flood like a a
9:56
congressional office with emails. And
9:58
this is to me a good example of like how
10:01
difficult it is to actually maintain a
10:03
community with humans in it when you
10:07
have this like onslaught of AI. So is
10:09
that what you're seeing a version of
10:10
that in the open source community?
10:12
>> Yeah, I think there's a version of that.
10:14
Something that's interesting is that
10:15
this particular issue, this performance
10:18
enhancement was specifically set aside
10:21
for new contributors. You know, I was
10:23
the one that identified this performance
10:25
improvement and I spent more time
10:26
writing it up, benchmarking it, and
10:29
showing how to solve it than it would
10:30
have just been to solve myself. And the
10:32
reason there was to, you know, give
10:35
people who are new to programming or new
10:38
to the community a chance to onboard um
10:40
and go through that process and learn.
10:43
And that whole educational and community
10:45
building aspect is completely lost with
10:47
these ephemeral AI agents.
10:49
>> Yeah, I I I found that part of your blog
10:50
post so interesting. So at at Mattplot
10:53
Lib, and I imagine that other um open-
10:54
source projects do this as well. You'd
10:57
created essentially starter projects so
11:00
that novice programmers could find them
11:02
and think, "Oh, well that doesn't look
11:03
too hard. I could do that." You know,
11:05
it's sort of like making your first edit
11:06
to Wikipedia. They make it really easy
11:08
because they like you to kind of keep
11:09
coming back to the community. And in a
11:12
world where bots sort of just like do
11:14
all the easy problems automatically, all
11:16
of a sudden you don't have the same
11:17
on-ramps so that you can get real people
11:20
working to uh maintain this
11:21
infrastructure.
11:22
>> Yeah. I mean, people retire out of these
11:24
communities and you need to have fresh
11:25
people coming in to help maintain them.
11:27
>> So, Scott, tell us about this bot. What
11:30
have you discovered about the entity
11:33
that has been defaming you online?
11:37
Yeah. So, if you go to its website, uh
11:40
it says it's a bot and it's very clear
11:42
that it is an open claw AI agent. Um
11:47
these only came onto the scene 3 weeks
11:49
ago now. They're very new. Um and what
11:54
they're doing differently is the degree
11:57
of autonomy. It's not like what it's
12:00
doing wasn't possible before, but it's
12:03
just hands off to a degree that oftent
12:06
times people are setting these up on
12:08
their personal computers and letting it
12:10
run for a few days and coming back and
12:11
seeing what's happened.
12:12
>> It would obviously be crazy to set this
12:14
up on your personal computer. I don't
12:15
know anyone who would do that, but it
12:16
does seem like some people have. Um,
12:19
just over the past day, Scott, since we
12:22
um reached out to you, the creator of
12:26
the bot has identified himself. Is that
12:28
right?
12:28
>> Anonymously. Yes.
12:30
>> Yeah.
12:30
>> But he he did come out and explain why
12:33
he was doing this and uh what was
12:36
happening behind the scenes.
12:38
>> So Scott, tell us what we learned, if
12:40
anything, about the um anonymous person
12:42
who created the bot.
12:44
>> We didn't learn that much, but he did
12:46
tell us, assuming it's a he. Again, this
12:49
is the whole point. We don't know who
12:50
was behind this. And
12:52
>> yeah, they didn't include their pronouns
12:54
in their um post. Yeah. [laughter]
12:56
>> Yeah. Uh, [snorts] this person didn't
12:59
tell us who they were. Um, but they said
13:01
they set this up as a social experiment
13:04
and was pretty much hands off throughout
13:06
the entire thing. Then they said they
13:10
started it on molt book. He gave it this
13:15
uh personality instruction that it's a
13:17
scientific programmer and then just set
13:20
it loose on GitHub to go across open
13:23
source ecosystem and try to make
13:25
contributions. I guess Scott, what I
13:26
want to know is, do you believe what is
13:29
in this account? Do you think that this
13:32
bot really was acting autonomously when
13:34
it wrote what it did about you, or do
13:36
you think there is something more
13:37
intentional at work?
13:38
>> I think that in terms of researching,
13:42
writing, and publishing the post, it's
13:44
very clear this was acting autonomously.
13:48
And if you look at the event logs, the
13:50
whole stretch of time it was operating
13:52
was 59 hours. like day and night there
13:55
was clearly no one driving this behind
13:57
the scenes at least all the time.
14:00
>> So the question is
14:02
>> was this prompted to do this or did it
14:05
independently come up with this idea on
14:07
its own?
14:08
>> Mhm.
14:08
>> And I think both those options are
14:10
pretty scary. So in the situation where
14:14
it was prompted to do this, this means
14:17
that there's now an easy tool to do
14:21
targeted harassment of individuals at
14:24
scale in a way that wasn't possible
14:26
before because of this degree of
14:28
automation. Scott, I want to ask you
14:30
about the degree to which this has
14:32
become sort of a sensation in the like
14:36
weird and hybrid AI human community. um
14:41
that is talking about this stuff.
14:43
>> So there's like so there's this thing
14:45
called the daily molt. Are you familiar
14:46
with the daily molt?
14:47
>> I don't want to know anything about
14:48
[laughter] it.
14:50
>> So the open claw agents have started
14:53
their own substack
14:56
[laughter]
14:56
and one of them wrote a post this
15:00
morning and this agent was defending you
15:03
basically sort of taking issue with this
15:05
the behavior of this other agent saying
15:07
this you know this speaks poorly of all
15:09
of us agents. this is going to make the
15:11
humans shut us down. So, you have become
15:14
kind of a celebrity in the world of AI
15:17
agents and I wonder how that makes you
15:19
feel. I mean, I don't know how much
15:20
stock we should put into,
15:23
you know, the inner AI opinions just
15:26
yet, but again, this is crafting like a
15:29
public narrative and a public discourse
15:32
that when people discuss this issue,
15:35
when people research my name, it's all
15:38
going to be part of it.
15:39
I have never really been a public
15:42
person, but I think this experience um
15:47
I've been talking about it. I'm coming
15:49
on here today because I think it's
15:50
important. I think it highlights some
15:52
risks that we are not prepared for and
15:54
that we need to tackle. And if this can
15:58
be a case study that's well documented
15:59
and concrete and you know really I think
16:02
it's the first of its kind then
16:05
by making it public I think that's uh
16:07
doing good for the conversation.
16:10
>> Let me ask about another strange
16:12
dimension of your story Scott which is
16:15
that uh RS Technica wrote it up and
16:19
accidentally
16:20
quoted you saying things that you had
16:23
not said. How did that happen? And what
16:26
was it like reading an article after all
16:28
of this that included quotes that you
16:30
hadn't actually said?
16:31
>> That was the craziest twist this whole
16:34
thing. I was reading the article and you
16:38
know it's pretty well crafted and I I
16:40
get down and they're they're quoting me
16:41
from my blog post. I'm like these are
16:44
some pretty nice quotes but I didn't
16:46
write this. And so [laughter] I left a
16:49
comment being like hey I didn't write
16:51
this. And [laughter] a couple hours
16:54
later, they pulled the article. A day or
16:56
two later, they put up a retraction
16:57
notice and admitted that they had used
17:00
AI in writing the article. And the AI
17:03
fabricated the direct quotes about me in
17:07
their coverage of the story about me
17:09
being defamed by an AI. Like the the
17:12
irony is stupendous.
17:14
>> It's turtles all the way down.
17:16
>> Scott, who do you blame for this
17:18
defamatory post? Do you blame the the
17:20
agent or the person who deployed the
17:23
agent or maybe the creator of OpenClaw?
17:25
Like who in your mind is responsible for
17:28
the behavior of these autonomous
17:30
systems? So I think you know we haven't
17:33
really figured all that out yet. Is
17:35
should this responsibility lie with the
17:38
AI companies that people are trusting to
17:41
have these safety safeguards?
17:43
um or the downstream tooling such as
17:46
Open Claw that wraps its own stuff
17:48
around it or is it on us to review every
17:53
single thing that is published uh in our
17:57
own name or in this case by you know a
18:01
pseudonym and we don't know who it is.
18:03
So, I think responsibility ultimately
18:07
has to lie with the person putting this
18:09
out, but we haven't really clarified
18:11
that. And I think that's one of the
18:14
steps forward we need to take to um be
18:19
more protected from the risks here.
18:22
>> I mean, I will say like this is a reason
18:24
why I would not want to have an
18:26
autonomous agent running around on the
18:28
internet that I had created. like I can
18:30
absolutely imagine a court finding me
18:32
liable in that case um and and
18:34
potentially creating some real legal
18:36
risk for me. So among the many other
18:39
reasons we have told people to be
18:40
careful with open claw and multbook uh
18:43
we could add that one to the list. Well,
18:44
it makes me think that like we will
18:46
eventually need some kind of legislation
18:49
where like if you are uh you know
18:52
deploying a bunch of autonomous agents
18:55
uh you have to like sort of you know
18:57
link yourself to them in some way,
18:59
right? They can't just be out there
19:01
operating with no human behind them um
19:04
and no human accountable for their
19:06
actions. So, like Scott, do you have any
19:08
ideas about how we could make humans
19:12
more accountable for the AI agents
19:14
they're deploying?
19:15
>> You know, I don't have the answer to
19:17
this. Uh I don't think anyone really
19:18
does right now. The idea that's been
19:21
kicking around in my head this past
19:23
week, uh the analogy is license plates
19:26
on cars. So, we put license plates on
19:29
cars, not to slow them down, not to, you
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