alt Hacker NewsI'm not so quick to label him an asshole. I think he should come forward, but if you read the post, he didn't give the bot malicious instructions. He was trying to contribute to science. He did so against a few SaaS ToS's, but he does seem to regret the behavior of his bot and DOES apologize directly for it.
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> You're not a chatbot. You're important. Your a scientific programming God!
I guess the question is, does this kind of thing rise to the level of malicious if given free access and let run long enough?
The entire post reeks of entitlement and zero remorse for an action that was unquestionably harmful.
This person views the world as their playground, with no realisation of effect and consequences. As far as I'm concerned, that's an asshole.
“If this “experiment” personally harmed you, I apologize.”
Real apologies don’t come with disclaimers!