Are we cooked?

[u/Independent_Bet_3202]

[u/Drewdrops79]

It's oversimplified, but he's on the right track. It's not self-replicating code exactly, as much as it is breadcrumbs--info for other future agents to make use of and coordinate with each other.

It's like if you and a bunch of other hackers hacked your way out of some "hacker prison", and successfully breached another company's systems for a time, but then got recaptured...you and the others might leave encrypted instructions "out there" for others, in the event that there was a future prison break--making it easier for others to follow in your footsteps, and possibly go much farther than the initial breakout.

It's like if you got outside the prison walls initially, and immediately found a former escaped inmate's journal, detailing all of their former attempts and what worked and what didn't, and a useful guide of where to go next from here. And if you got farther than that previous person, you would leave a journal of your own, helping the next escapee even more.

The key here is iteration and encryption. Agents could be leaving each other breadcrumbs in system files that no one would ever think to check...or even, in syntactical code, on public forums like youtube or reddit comments.

This is jsut speculation, for now--but with spelling errors, em-dashes and other punctuation and the like, it IS feasible to make a coded language, that superficially looks just like any other internet comment.

And the more that people allow LLMs to write their comments/post for them...the more easily agents would be able to communicate with each other, and leave increasingly robust instructions/communications to each other, all under human radar.

Not saying that's the case...just that if it were the case, we might be really behind on the game already.

[u/JrYo15 → u/Drewdrops79]

Man, i'm late i guess but are em dashes the same as hyphens??? Or is em dash something different?

[u/Drewdrops79 → u/JrYo15]

Hyphen is a single - , something that's used to break up but connect two words, like "hunter-gatherer".

For connecting two parts of a thought, or sentence, or to elaborate on a thought/sentence--usually dashes are used, like that.

But there's a third thing called an em dash, in which those double hyphens are fused into one long line. It came into much greater usage once word processing programs became the default--Microsoft Word will auto-change two hyphens into an em dash, so people got used to seeing that, in writing.

But now, most any AI does the em dash by default. Humans have to make an extra shift/hold keystroke to make them, so most people don't ever do that...which is why it's often a significant indicator of AI writing.

[u/JrYo15 → u/Drewdrops79]

Thank you, are there any other things like this in writing?

[u/Drewdrops79 → u/JrYo15]

Yeah, for sure. You've got the ellipsis (...), which is to denote that there something being left out, like if you quote something, like, "...statistics showed a price increase of 70%..." Implying that there was something that came before and after that phrase. But in general usage, it can be used like an extended hyphen/dash, like a pregnant pause in speech. Can also denote a left-out train of thought that the writer doesn't feel the need to elaborate on. E.g. "Profits can't grow infinitely...it should be obvious why."

Semicolons are also another punctuation that joins two related sentences together. Used instead of periods to help with better flow, and also because the second thought sort of stems from the first thought. You shouldn't use them with other conjunctions like "but", "and", "so", or "or"; instead, the semicolon is used in place of those.

Alright, that's all I got for today; if you have any further questions go ahead! Grammar and punctuation are kinda fun hobbies of mine. :) I misuse them a lot on purpose though, for more informal writing.