> you better believe the other thing it's supposed to do aside from build a picture of your friends and loved ones is to figure out what makes you love to shop. This is actually some of the most nauseating prompt text i have ever read.
There's no "prompt injection" like the OP claims. You can just ask Muse for all the info for its dedicated VM, and Muse will tell you. Meta has confirmed this it intended behavior.
And idk what's even being implied by that quote. (Yes, it tries to help you shop. And? Or is the critique just that OP doesn't like the prose in that markdown file?)
What's being implied is that your nefarious company is building another product that exists solely to suck up people's attention and time in order to build a profile of them to sell them garbage that they don't need and use their personal data to manipulate them.
I don't know how anyone can use Muse. It's like taking everything that Facebook has had to guess and infer about you over the years using various analytics and instead just dumping it directly into a chat bot and giving the company everything it wants. Zuckerberg and his soulless C-suite must be licking their lips.
> What's being implied is that your nefarious company is building another product that exists solely to suck up people's attention and time inorder to build a profile to sell them garbage that they don't need and use their personal data to manipulate them.
You're free to speculate that Meta is lying about what it will or won't use the data for. I won't argue over that. That's an important topic and I'm not gonna persuade anyone via an HN comment. Skepticism is fine
But the example linked to in the above comment is not evidence of that at all. A skill explaining how to format purchase history in markdown format is not evidence of hidden motivations.
In general the entire thread is nothing-burger, and that's all I'm getting at.
I understand what is being implied. I'm saying that the provided example is poor evidence of what's being implied.
We all know Meta can already track things like certain purchases. A skill file telling AI how to format purchase history in markdown format is not going to help any of Meta's ads or RecSys systems.
You can believe Meta does bad things without thinking everything Meta does is an example of said bad things
So we should judge each piece of evidence in a vacuum?
Facebook has broken its promises about user data many times before. I don't buy anything they say about Muse, and nobody in their right mind should. Unless they’re getting paid to, of course.
Aside, if “a skill file organizing purchase history in markdown format” is the only thing you took away from that thread, you might want to take a closer look.
> So we should judge each piece of evidence in a vacuum?
You're free to believe whatever you want about Meta. But no, you shouldn't point to non-evidence, interpret it through the lens of your prior beliefs, and then claim that it's actually evidence supporting your beliefs.
> Aside, if “a skill file organizing purchase history in markdown format” is the only thing you took away from that thread, you might want to take a closer look.
That's what that specific quote I was referencing was referring to. I already responded to the supposed prompt injection/security concerns above.
<< you shouldn't point to non-evidence, interpret it through the lens of your prior beliefs, and then claim that it's actually evidence supporting your beliefs
Not parent, but it is worth responding to as it applies. Not prior beliefs. From prior actions. Unless you are only now becoming aware of the existing ecosystem, there is almost no way in which you can buy into that ecosystem without expecting hard rug pull. And the beauty is, everyone gets to make a choice, but they best do it is with eyes wide open and the understanding of the deal for it will be changing soon.
I think you're saying that prior actions justify the beliefs you hold. Fair enough, I'll concede that for the sake of argument.
My above comment still stands. Even if your beliefs are justified, that doesn't mean you should treat non-evidence as evidence supporting your beliefs. (Tbh my point is kinda trivial/pedantic. But I feel like folks just always want to double down that every criticism of meta is correct).
You do have a point, and I sometimes clamp down on random meta complaints myself, but mostly because there are enough of real complaints to worry about. In other words, your comment in useful in providing appropriate balance. I don't like meta. That much is evident, but there is no reason to make argument against them less potent by not considering how it lands.
> So we should judge each piece of evidence in a vacuum?
I mean… little drops of water make the ocean, so if the complaint is with the drop then yes. Doesn’t mean the ocean is poisoned by some of these droplets though.
Two things can be true at the same time - Facebook as a whole is untrustable but you can use Muse Glimmer from them without giving them this data.
The comment you're responding to has two sentences separated by a period. You can use that as an indication that the two issues being pointed out are, in fact, separate things. Do you understand now?
Totally fair if that's just a public stratch pad (which happens to make several specific, unsubstantiated claims). Not hating on that guy.
But if someone posts the thread with no other context than "check this out", then it seems appropriate explain this missing context.
And for the record, I did scroll back read through what he's saying as you suggested. The broader context is exactly what makes it clear he's just a bit confused about what he's "uncovered". (Obvious caveat: I haven't read through everything this guy has written, I could be missing something)
> I did scroll back read through what he's saying as you suggested. ... Obvious caveat: I haven't read through everything this guy has written...
Did you also scroll forward to read what he wrote after the stuff in the thread that was linked to? This tool is pretty obviously designed -whether intentionally or not- to enable the exfiltration of a ton of sensitive data to untrusted third parties while leaving its intended user none the wiser.
a) More being surprised the muse will just provide internal details (which again, as intended)
b) the bash scripts are ugly (okay? I don't think that's what we're arguing about)
c) surprise that muse runs as root (then realizing this is explained by the VM-in-VM model and linking to the blog which explains this)
d) surprise that muse can run as a seed box (idk is this supposed to be the security concern?)
Could you please be more specific about which part you're concerned about? I think that'd be more productive than linking to a long thread, me responding to what I see, then being told that it's just a scratch pad and I'm silly for taking it seriously but also if I look closer I'll see the deeper truth.
> ...then being told that it's just a scratch pad and I'm silly for taking it seriously...
Yeah, given how this has been going, I expected that sort of misrepresentation. A careful reader remembers that this is what I said:
You should pop up to that -er- blog's top level, scroll back until you find the start of the investigation, and then start reading. Yeah, it's a huge pain in the ass, but this is -AFAICT- the guy's personal notepad, rather than some place where formal reports usually go. If someone walked over, picked up my personal notepad at $DAYJOB, and complained about how they couldn't make sense of it, I'd tell them to fuck right off, yanno?
Anyway. I'm certain that your answer to this is going to be some flavor of "no, of course it isn't", but are the combination of these things simply no problem?
I remembered what you said and I genuinely don't understand what I mischaracterized.
TBH I saw none of those comments by scrolling forward or backwards from the original link. Now it turns out I supposed to be checking quote tweets, not just scrolling like you said above? (tbf I'm not familiar with the neuromatch UI, could be user error on my part).
Again, I think this would've gone smoother if you actually articulated the problem you're concerned about, instead of linking to a "personal notepad" which you acknowledge has mistakes and isn't easily intelligible, and then blaming me for missing the actual point.
I'll look through these new comments later.
Edit: I see from your original comment what you meant by "top-level". I originally assumed you just meant top of the thread. I'll take the L here.
I've read through those comments and I see more interesting concerns being raised ("interesting" as in "not completely confused for trivial reasons", I'm not conceding anything).
Like I mentioned I don't work on Muse, and I suppose it'd wouldn't be appropriate for me (self-identified Meta employee) to publicly speculate on what defenses do and don't exist or what is intended. (sorry kinda a cop-out, I know).
Thanks for providing specific links to the specific concerns being raised.
> I originally assumed you just meant top of the thread. I'll take the L here.
I'd very much rather you commit to
* Slowing the hell down when you're reading things that other people write. If you don't have time to slow down and actually read, stay the hell out of the conversation.
* Upon receiving a notification that you've massively misunderstood something that someone has said in writing, immediately stop, carefully inspect what you know and what you assume, and then go back and carefully re-read the thing you've been told you massively misunderstood while keeping at the front of your mind the knowledge that your task is to find out what parts you totally misunderstood during your prior reads
This second point is a huge part of that whole "principle of charity" thing that's the fundamental part of good "netiquette". This principle should be abandoned when you have personal knowledge that your conversation partner is a fucking bozo or is otherwise intentionally fucking with you... but -as I'm sure you know- one cannot possibly possess that knowledge at the start of one's first conversation with a stranger.
> I suppose it'd wouldn't be appropriate for me ... to publicly speculate on what defenses do and don't exist or what is intended.
With all due respect, that's not what I asked for. What I asked was
...are the combination of these things simply no problem?
If it helps to focus your thinking, remember that "prompt injection" is a fancy phrase for "the tool is now blindly executing code handed to it by some random stranger on The Internet in the same way it would execute operator-issued or tool-manufacturer-embedded instructions".
No? I'm rather excited that perhaps you'll take this as a "teachable moment" to adjust your behavior in a much more prosocial direction.
So many people wade into a conversation without actually having the time and energy required to actually participate in that conversation. Even if we ignore the ragebait bots and people paid to act like them, I'd expect that this describes the behavior of the vast majority of folks -when measuring by comment volume- who choose to comment on the internet.
Public discourse would be far better if more people were aware of the liberation delivered to each of us long ago by Mr. Marcus Aurelius. [0]
And -well- if you jumped in here because of a vague sense of duty towards your employer... remember that not only are they a -more or less- multi-trillion-dollar company, but they have survived -among so many other things- renaming the company to commemorate its new "this will wreck the company if we don't win it!" project and then burning tens of billions of dollars on said project over the course of just a few years with precious little to show for it. They'll survive some negative sentiment in some random HN thread just fine... they don't need your backup.
A quick note for folks who are going to go "duhhh, so what?" after reading that thread:
That investigation is still ongoing, and that subthread doesn't contain all the information from it. You should pop up to that -er- blog's top level, scroll back until you find the start of the investigation, and then start reading. Yeah, it's a huge pain in the ass, but this is -AFAICT- the guy's personal notepad, rather than some place where formal reports usually go. If someone walked over, picked up my personal notepad at $DAYJOB, and complained about how they couldn't make sense of it, I'd tell them to fuck right off, yanno?
> you better believe the other thing it's supposed to do aside from build a picture of your friends and loved ones is to figure out what makes you love to shop. This is actually some of the most nauseating prompt text i have ever read.