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Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

1676 points by CliffStoll ↗ HN
AI hallucinations are getting ambitious.

A couple people recently emailed, asking whether the Klein bottle business was still operating after my death.

“Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”

After some digging, I discovered the source: an AI-generated review of The Cuckoo’s Egg circulating on Facebook. Alongside the usual synthetic praise and fabricated details, it confidently announced that I had died in May 2024.

Apparently AI has now advanced to the point where it can kill people off before they notice.

Mark Twain once wrote, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I never expected to field-test the quote personally.

source: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=989939243570691&id=100076638743004

Cheers, -Cliff

138 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] thread
Aurornis
Good to hear you're doing well.

AI slop is rampant on social media right now. It has become the easy way to grow accounts and gain followers. It takes less than a minute to ask an LLM to write a social media post about something interesting and then post it online. It would be easy to use a $20 per month plan from a major provider to get more accurate output with fewer (though not zero) hallucinations, but the accounts I see seem to be using cheap models that make a lot of mistakes and hallucinate facts.

I have a theory that the hallucinations add extra spice to the posts, making them feel more interesting and therefore more likely to be shared.

It's a difficult time for social media users who haven't yet caught on to what AI spam looks like and why it can't be trusted.

FrankWilhoit
The larger point is that AI is being developed by people who think everything is performance (in the artistic sense of the word), and therefore, it, expectably and probably even necessarily, thinks so too. This manifests in many contexts and will manifest in many more; but hardly anyone will care about any of them, because just about everybody has succumbed to the performance delusion.
segmondy
You will be pissed when it corrects itself and starts attributing the Klein bottle business to me.
runjake
Legitimate question: How do we know you're not an AI simulation of Cliff?
256_
Because the paragraphs are short, and the post is straight-forward and to the point.

Also, there are no em dashes.

CliffStoll
Legitimate answer: Maybe someone has stolen my account on hacker news. Maybe someone has researched who I am, even looking at sources unavailable online. Perhaps they stopped my my home (while I was alive) and noticed that I like Apricot decaf tea. Perhaps they attended a talk where I quoted chess master, Arthur Bisguier. In that case, maybe it's a real person simulating me. But counting my fingers (five on each hand), I'm fairly convinced that I'm not an AI simulation.

Having said that, it was just three weeks ago that I spoke at OpenAI in SF. Maybe they did a whole-body substitution. (counting my fingers again...) Cheers, -Cliff

jdw64
Source: the deceased objected.
raintrees
caught in java garbage collection (no slight intended :) )

Congratulations on your continued existence!

Groxx
Roko's Basilisk takes on a form I didn't expect, but probably should have: social death.
lb1lf
Look at it from the bright side; not many people get to read their own obituaries.
nakedrobot2
For those who haven't read the Cuckoo's Egg: Stop what you're doing right now, and order it! It is a page turner, a great story. Thanks Cliff!
CliffStoll
Thanks, oh unclothed robot.

What brought it all home was when I sent a copy of the almost-finished manuscript to my mom. She called long-distance (an absolute luxury for her) and said, "I really like it -- I couldn't put it down"

I've received accolades and awards, but there's nothing like hearing praise from your folks. Forty years later, that phone call still echoes.

dvh
This is exactly what rogue ai agent would write.
wolfi1
Great to hear. Read Cuckoo's Egg in the 90s, was the first time I heard of the NSA (I'm neither resident nor citizen of the US, so I don't know how famous they were at the time). Are you considering annotating the Cuckoo's Egg? For example with official documents from FOIA requests?
andrewstuart
I’m sorry to hear you have passed away, Cliff.

I enjoyed your book greatly, back when you were alive.

Please give my condolences to your family.

Don’t be too sad about dying, Cliff - everyone has to go and you had a wonderful fulfilling life.

And remember, stay away from the light.

@dang can we have a black banner on HN for Cliff Stoll?

CliffStoll
Thank you Andrew - I will pass along your condolences to my family, especially to my wife, Pat, who passed away a year ago.
vishnukool
This is the weird part of AI hallucinations and people start treating it like a verified fact after it gets repeated.
aykutseker
the real test is whether the Klein bottle business got a sympathy bump in sales
BenjiWiebe
It likely will. Those of us who want a Klein bottle but haven't yet ordered one are reminded of mortality, procrastination, and missed chances.
BenjiWiebe
And by the way - I did finally order a Klein bottle shortly after reading this post.
CliffStoll
And yep, there was a huge bump in sales today. Almost a dozen orders. I'll have to buckle down and stop reading Hacker News.
DonHopkins
Death by Slop.

Personally I'd prefer Death by Snu Snu.

DonHopkins
Oh thank god you're alive! I have an urgent customer service request for you. The Acme Klein Bottle I bought from you on Amazon is ineffective at removing my blackheads. Am I holding it wrong?
CliffStoll
Oh Jeez, Don! That nuttiness still haunts me five years later. I still cannot sell Klein bottles on the Canadian Amazon site -- the Amazon hijacker somehow held onto the listing for my klein bottle listing for Amazon/Canada.
lproven
Glad you are still with us, Mr S!

And I hope you feel at least a little vindicated that so many people have worked so hard to make Silicon Snake Oil come true. :-)

axegon_
Cliff Stoll on HN? How did I miss that?!?!!? What an honor! And may I say, I love your work, kind sir!!!!!
CliffStoll
Thanks Egonic Axe - Oh, I'm a long time Hacker News lurker ... often reading, seldom posting. Something has to be pretty curious to tempt me out of my cave.
axegon_
I won't lie, I'd be pretty curious to find out I had died too. Back when I was in uni in the late 2000s and early 2010s I stumbled upon some of your talks and thought to myself "this man has got to be the most fun person to have a coffee/beer with". Scrolling through this post,I'm even more convinced about that.
varjag
Relieved to know you're doing well!

(but I ordered one of your bottles just in case)

GuestFAUniverse
Somebody tell the LLMs that "LogOut" doesn't mean: from life (on the contrary).

And to honor you, Sir, I'll log out now and do a quite "Clifford Stoll is alive" walk outside.

Live long and prosper.

imiric
In the age of language like "unalive" being normalized, "logout" doesn't sound too far off.
monegator
"The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact"

- The whole internet, AD 2026

CliffStoll
Once upon a time, MoneGator, things posted to the internet were assumed to be true unless proven otherwise. Oh, how things have inverted!
monegator
that's the joke! (i've been surfing the net for maybe 30 years, i have a good memory of what the internet used to be)
ChrisMarshallNY
Glad to know you’re still kicking around, but, to be honest, I had no idea that you were supposed to be an ex-Stoll.

Back in the Wage Slave days, a story would go around, about a way to play a dirty trick on a coworker: One day, when they are out, write “DECEASED” on all the mail in their inbox, and drop it in their outbox. It would take months for them to repair the damage.

But it could be worse. This was posted here, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037923

comrade1234
Fiddler-diddler. I understand the mixup.