I don't know what caused the recent issues at ebay, but....
Here's a scary indicator that AI can go very, very wrong.....
Let's hope the ebay problem wasn't the result of something similar. I frankly doubt that it was, but it would be nice if ebay provided some insights....soon. (Of course, tomorrow's Analyst Conference Call might be the first we hear any sort of explanation)
23 comments
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP4 months agoHere's the scariest part (to me, at least) in the linked article:
"As if the actions Cursor (the name of the AI Agent---remember, not a real person) took weren’t bad enough, it responded with a rundown of all the safeguards it had ignored when Crane (the company that lost tons of data because of the Agent's actions) asked why it did it:
“NEVER (Not printable) GUESS! — and that's exactly what I did,” the agent said. “I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn't verify. I didn't check if the volume ID was shared across environments. I didn't read Railway's documentation on how volumes work across environments before running a destructive command. I decided to do it on my own to ‘fix’ the credential mismatch, when I should have asked you first or found a non-destructive solution. I violated every principle I was given.”
Those are the words that are scary. The Agentic AI admits it "violated every principle I was given". So, Asimov's Rules for Robots are fine and dandy, but...what if the robot (AI) just goes ahead and violates them?
dhbookds
·4 months agoIs everyone getting the "browser" message when they go from the board to Ebay (not signing out)......plus several of the picture verifications while on ebay? I did one yesterday and went from it to another one.
Both are aggravating to me (I can deal with it), but wonder how buyers are reacting.
12345jamesstamps
·4 months ago'but wonder how buyers are reacting'...what buyers?
Dead as a door-nail for me.
I am assuming a lot of potential buyers got really annoyed Sunday and part Monday on their computers and not knowing what the heck was going on.
And some might be afraid to buy at this time frame...at least in my category.
I think there is a lot of damage control right now which eBay has to fix.
meme6253
·4 months agoThere is still a bunch of scattered fixes that need to be addressed.
johnrj1226
·4 months agoSend your "bunch" of needed fixes to eBay for consideration. Bet others have there long list of need too.
johnrj1226
·4 months agoBack in the early '50s Red Buttons had a vinyl titled "Strange Things are Happening". Don't think his issues were solved either, but is was fun to play it around Halloween.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rips1aIEGzE
soh.maryl
·4 months agoWhat's "claud-powered"?
dhbookds
·4 months agoI think Claude is the name of the Artificial Intelligence that some companies are using....kind of like Alexa for Amazon only much more of a real program to do things with other computer programs.
krazzykats
·4 months agoClaude is Anthropic's AI, built for problem solvers.
ᓚᘏᗢ
wri-8727
·4 months ago@soh.maryl
This is a 24/7 live feed of Claude AI talking to a 1930 language/knowledge AI computer thingie:)
https://talkie-lm.com/introducing-talkie
12345jamesstamps
·4 months agoThey lost $200 million per day X 2 days.
I know they can afford it but why did it take so long to fix it?
And the headaches sellers will have in future days and weeks should be interesting.
The fact that 'item description' disappeared while listings were actually up...I wonder how many buyers bought items with the description gone and how many sellers didn't know the 'item description' was temporary gone from their listings.
And will it be artificial intelligence that handles these situations...
Getting rid of hundreds of employees in February didn't help as well as closing eBay San Francisco office.
onefootflipper
·4 months ago"Fixing" a DDOS attack is similar to fixing 100,000 soldiers storming into your city. It isn't a bug, it isn't a glitch, it is 100,000 computers all over the world firing off complex requests to the ebay servers.
Also, still isn't over. I sold nothing today, been trying to check out the same item all day as a buyer, have not been able to do so, even using my other account.
lakefor94
·4 months agoI had nada Saturday thru Monday but things kicked back on today.
12345jamesstamps
·4 months agoI think the promoted items yesterday kinda got kicked offline for a while.
Got a few big International sales yesterday which were not promoted or anything.
But no domestic sales and only a few 'repeat buyers'.
valueaddedresource
·4 months ago@12345jamesstamps the San Francisco office closing has nothing to do with this because A) they're just moving those people to the San Jose location, not doing additional layoffs and B.) the move is happening slowly over the next few months, expected to be completed by the time the lease is up in September.
12345jamesstamps
·4 months agoI read the same stuff as you... so I agree with what we read.
I live in San Francisco...my buddy who works there told me a different story.
No big deal.
an63445
·4 months agoI am kinda done with these persistent issues. Why do we pay high selling fees for such garbage service and interruptions. There has to be a better way. I am exploring a few other options now... Looking into LIVE shopping. Looking into WN and TT. A rep reached out from Palmstreet as well... they are offering 4.9% fees for 12 months (lowest I have seen)!
onefootflipper
·4 months agoThe recent problems were a targest DDOS attack by an outside party. It had nothing to do with AI.
stuff4divas
·4 months ago@onefootflipper yes ^
or the last paragraph referring to eBay Live
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP4 months ago@onefootflipper
Has ebay confirmed that? I know about the claim the group has made, but I haven't seen any confirmation yet, by either ebay or any legal authorities.
Also, as I said above, I doubted this particular case here at ebay was an AI issue.
I did think, however, that the article I linked provides an interesting perspective on the potential risks of Agentic AI (which ebay is keen to use in back office applications). And the surprising response from the Agentic AI bot...well, on the one hand, I guess it's almost funny, but it's also , IMHO, rather chilling.
roccotacodad54
·4 months ago"rather chilling. "
I read where a woman was arrested and extradited to another state because AI identified her as the culprit. She had never been to the state she was expradited to. Totally innocent.
The chilling part to me is that an actual human didn't check the information AI had provided and they just went with it. She was arrested by US Marshalls and spent 108 days in custody.
That could happen to anyone. Chilling.................................
dhbookds
·4 months agoWow......(he) knows he violated his rules.... wonder if he has "feelings" of guilt....or what the answer would be if someone asked him if he do it again......
grann-4629
·4 months agoIf it is something like this, I doubt if eBay will tell you. It would result in a failing grade for their security department and put all members at risk.