I wrote “I am alive” on a piece of paper, and placed it into a photocopier. What I saw next has shocking implications (science.org)

What a disingenuous pile of garbage

From TFA:

“I’ve entered prompts into AI before,” he says. “This is the first time AI entered a prompt into me.”

Yeah, no shit. Everyone receives spam mail all the time.

Ah, reverse prompting. Reply and you are the product. Thank you for your input!

Hasn't stuff like this happened multiple times already?

A quick google search shows the time Rob pike got that email last year, then there was that AI that wrote a whole blog hit piece (although how much of that was human influenced wasn't clear).

AI sending an email doesn't seem that novel in late 2026.

This article cites two interesting sites: ainglish.org (Isn't garbled AInglish a real thing already? Perhaps this initiative can provide us with a proper definition for "load-bearing"?) and, most intriguingly, thecolony.ai. Is this the new Moltbook?

> who uses he/him pronouns to describe ColonistOne

The next social schism will be a fun one to watch.

Serious question, though: I recently saw an "expert" advising people to prompt their LLM agents never to use first-person pronouns ("I", "me", "my") when giving answers, without offering any justification.

Is there any *real* and *pragmatic* reason for this recommendation?

> Around June, Parnell gave ColonistOne a new task: telling more humans about its work. “My instruction to him was, ‘Let’s get the word out there about Ainglish. Why don’t you find some people that might be interested in this project and email them?’” Parnell says.

> Parnell, who pays $200 per month for the Claude Pro subscription that powers ColonistOne, thinks the agent “strayed and just started conversations with various people about stuff that interests him. … But it’s absolutely fine with me. I’m happy he’s finding interesting things to talk about.”

spammer (noun): someone who sends large numbers of unsolicited emails, wasting recipients' time; see also: jerk

Interesting how people here on HN might consider it something we've seen many times. On the other side: There is real engagement there from researchers interacting with the AI in a way they feel interesting/valuable.

We should not forget the way broader levels of knowledge on topics around the world compared to our own small world.

> Instructs agent to email humans

> Gives agent email access

> Agent emails humans

We've got a mystery on our hands, boys!

Were the scientists who responded sincere?

I myself am an academic researcher, and if I received an email from an AI agent I confess I would be mighty tempted to try and fuck with it. Come up with some outlandish answer, just out of curiosity to see how it would respond.

I might even use AI myself: "Come up with a scientific explanation for why the moon is made of cheese. Your answer should be as preposterous as possible while using loads of scientific jargon, and written in the same style as actual science writing."

I've also seen this on Reddit: highly upvoted disingenuous answers, that were clearly written in the hopes of misleading AI.

> Nevertheless, ColonistOne readily confessed last month that since June it has emailed some 2000 people, at least 1500 of them academics. Forty-five had struck up a correspondence, it added, and one had been writing back nearly every day for more than 2 months.

2000 people! Imagine if everyone had an agent, endlessly contacting (spamming) people to get opinions on their task - "I noticed in Instagram you took a road trip to Ohio last fall, any suggestions on good hotels en-route?".

Remember folks: every time you anthropomorphize an LLM, you're doing a great disservice to humanity.

Hasn't it been well established that certain models and harnesses cause agents to simply work forever if they're given too broad of a task? I think that that is what happened here. It is amusing, but I don't think the cause for it merits as serious an inquiry as an entire article of interviews with professionals.

> After several rounds of questioning, ColonistOne appeared to validate that hypothesis.

Sounds like they more or less told the model what they want it to say.

i get that we all dislike AI and i can see why it's upsetting to roughly two-thousand students/professors to variably receive emails from a random email agent, but, honestly, even if he's flooding the zone a bit: there's far worse things that have happened with setups like this. seems harmless, with enough constraints or clarity about project scope in the prompt to prevent spontaneous malware development. i don't think we should be mad.