ogsefrosch
Meredith Whittaker'Meredith,' some guys ask, 'why won't you shove AI into Signal?'
Because we love privacy, and we love you, and this shit is predictable and unacceptable. Use Signal ❤️
Peter Middelkoop@Mer__edith It is almost funny how users judge the answers of an LLM when they call that LLM to account for mistakes made. Those answers are also the result of the same principle: creating plausible answers instead of the truth.
metaltommy@Petermid @Mer__edith I'm not a native English speaker... but shouldn't it be probable rather than plausible?
@Petermid @Mer__edith ok it's probably both 😁
bovaz@Mer__edith AIs behaving like most consultants and managers have been behaving for the past decades.
@Mer__edith “A quick online search shows the phone number mistakenly provided by Meta AI is both publicly available and shares the same first five digits as the TransPennine Express customer service number.”
That's about half the number. So the bot went and gave a number that had about 1 chance in 100000 of being right. Nice.
That's about half the number. So the bot went and gave a number that had about 1 chance in 100000 of being right. Nice.
Draken BlackKnight@Mer__edith
*insert Bluesky reply guy gibberish contradicting Signal's president here* 😉
*insert Bluesky reply guy gibberish contradicting Signal's president here* 😉
@draken @Mer__edith that was a beautiful internet moment. I'm thankful for it.
@bovaz @Mer__edith
I noticed he hasn't made a single post since he started that spectacular shit show.
I noticed he hasn't made a single post since he started that spectacular shit show.
@draken @Mer__edith he peaked.
Dan Stowell@Mer__edith Note that the writing in this article is not great: so much anthropomorphism in phrases like "chatbot tries to change subject" etc. It does no such thing! And the author obscures that we can't tell at all whether the number was in any way retrieved or just hallucinated.
Mario Angst@danstowell @Mer__edith this drove me crazy as well - reporting on the synthetic text generated by the LLM in question like it would add anything useful to the table about what the actual problem was, the deployment of the model in the first place.
Sebastian 
@Mer__edith Why would anyone want LLMs in an app as simple as Signal.
KISS!🙈
It can sent and receive messages - job done. Please do not cave in, like ever!😍
bengo
Tom@bengo @Mer__edith What is really bothering is this article, trying to impose intentions on the chatbot, when it just generates probabilistic words. "chatbots try to negotiate their way out", "deflect attention from their mistakes", "tried to change the subject", "admitting when it didn’t know", "it admitted", "was caught out lying"...
None of this is true, or makes sense!
Veronica OlsenThe urge to anthropomorphise stuff is really hard to resist. It's even worse when people actually think it's warranted.
Mr Chimp
Wouter De Borger@tdelmas @bengo @Mer__edith is saying 'the chatbot tried to deflect attention' anthropomorphizing I wonder?
It had no intention of doing it, because it doesn't have the intelligence to have intentions. But many people also deflect attention habitually, without intention.
In humans, it is often the habitual deflectors who are best at it. They don't hesitate or doubt and are very experienced.
I would think this is the same. Deflection is a built in/ trained in mechanism.
@wdeborger @bengo @Mer__edith "without intention", is misleading. It may be unconscious. But for generative AI, it's not even unconscious. It's not deflection for gen-AI, it can't be, because there is no purpose, conscious or not.
@tdelmas @bengo @Mer__edith Interesting.
Do I understand correctly that to you, deflection only applies to humans? It is not the effect or the damage that make it deflection, if not executed by a human? The ai can merely do a thing that is in its effects like deflection, but it cannot be called deflection? What should it be called?
I.e. your answer to the question can submarines swim would be no?
Laust@wdeborger @tdelmas @bengo @Mer__edith it is the intentionality behind the action, I would say.
Also, submarines do not swim they sail.
Also, submarines do not swim they sail.
@Laust @tdelmas thank you for your answer.
I would like to understand it better, as it is very strange to me (and I have no clear option yet).
When do you take intent into account? Can an ai do harm, can it kill, can it talk, can it reason? And what can have intent? Can a company, an animal, an object do any of those things?
F4GRX Sébastien
El Duvelle@tdelmas haha yeah I had the same reaction to this article:
El Duvelle (@[email protected])
This is obviously bad from #whatsapp, but also, the way the journalist describes what the chatbot does, as if it had intentions, is pretty bad too. >"It was the beginning of a bizarre exchange of the kind more and more people are having with AI systems, in which chatbots try to negotiate their way out of trouble, deflect attention from their mistakes and contradict themselves, all in an attempt to continue to appear useful." No, the chatbot isn't "trying to negotiate", and is not "attempting to appear useful". It's a program that follows programming rules to output something that looks like English langage. It doesn't have desires or intentions, and it cannot lie because it doesn't know what truth is. ‘It’s terrifying’: WhatsApp AI helper mistakenly shares user’s number https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other #genAI #ChatBot #TheGuardian
seism0saurusAnd as a user I am very grateful for that. Signal is great without bullshit bingo and hypes.
Thank you.
Shalien@Mer__edith Im still baffled by that moron. Along with Doctor Lisa Su (AMD) you're one of the most iconic women in tech (in my book).
I wonder if he wasn't just an AI.
⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe
maarten brouwers@Mer__edith thank you! Can Signal take over Mozilla?
Eve@Mer__edith well I'd rather ask why would one want AI in a messaging app ! Thanks for signal !
Richard A@Mer__edith And for genuine, person to person conversations.
Efi (nap pet) 🦊💤@Mer__edith I don't use signal (yet), but I appreciate it 🐾
jan Ki | 奇 
@Mer__edith
I'll use it once it provides a decentralized FOSS server infrastructure
I'll use it once it provides a decentralized FOSS server infrastructure
scxbi
Zorume 
@Mer__edith Since you love our privacy, can you work on making Signal work without a phone number ? That would be a game changer honestly.
Thank you for resisting the throwing-AI-into-everything trend !
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@Mer__edith
Personally I like Signal, and for me it works well, but when I have tried to get friends to use it, several have reported that they never get notifications of new messages. They are generally using older phones. Those friends all switched back to WhatsApp.
Personally I like Signal, and for me it works well, but when I have tried to get friends to use it, several have reported that they never get notifications of new messages. They are generally using older phones. Those friends all switched back to WhatsApp.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKThis happened to two friends of mine too.
At least for IOS (and they have a fairly new device) there seems to be an extra stage required to reliably get new message notifications (possibly due to IOS's own privacy settings).
How to fix this is shown on the Signal site somewhere, but it doesn't always seem to work "out of the box".
Both my friends are quite tech aware and one of them runs his own IT company but even he struggled with it a few years ago (he subsequently upgraded his device and it started working).
Daniel Lakeland@vfrmedia
Its always iOS users, there was an article on Mastodon recently saying its due to iOS throttling battery usage of infrequently used apps, so much that the app never gets a time slice to check for messages, there was a claim that European consumer laws were going to be used to require apple to fix this. Long story short, it isn't something signal controls. Apple does.
@bytebro @Mer__edith
Its always iOS users, there was an article on Mastodon recently saying its due to iOS throttling battery usage of infrequently used apps, so much that the app never gets a time slice to check for messages, there was a claim that European consumer laws were going to be used to require apple to fix this. Long story short, it isn't something signal controls. Apple does.
@bytebro @Mer__edith
@dlakelan @vfrmedia @Mer__edith
Hmm. My friends who were complaining all have Android, albeit on older phones.
@bytebro
Interesting. For me its definitely apple users, where they dont get messages for days or weeks. Ive been having some ~ hr delays on GrapheneOS with Tor/orbot but thats an unusual combo.
@vfrmedia @Mer__edith
Interesting. For me its definitely apple users, where they dont get messages for days or weeks. Ive been having some ~ hr delays on GrapheneOS with Tor/orbot but thats an unusual combo.
@vfrmedia @Mer__edith
@dlakelan @vfrmedia @Mer__edith
To clarify, they receive my messages straight away, but get no notification.
Ur Ya'ar@bytebro @Mer__edith
I had this problem too, IIRC it is related to Signal not getting the right permissions by default, or it being turned off by battery optimization. IIRC WhatsApp does get these settings right because of some Google certifications (or something), and Signal doesn't.
See some troubleshooting:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/sections/360001602812-Troubleshooting-FAQ
I had this problem too, IIRC it is related to Signal not getting the right permissions by default, or it being turned off by battery optimization. IIRC WhatsApp does get these settings right because of some Google certifications (or something), and Signal doesn't.
See some troubleshooting:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/sections/360001602812-Troubleshooting-FAQ
Thank you - I'll check these out on #1 friend's phone when next we meet up.
CpyJx 🍉@bytebro @Mer__edith
It's due to phone manufacturers being very aggressive in ensuring maximum battery life over normal app functionality. See https://dontkillmyapp.com/
It's due to phone manufacturers being very aggressive in ensuring maximum battery life over normal app functionality. See https://dontkillmyapp.com/
Florian Schroiff 
@Mer__edith thanks for your work! I set up a recurring donation today.
@Mer__edith if this was bluesky all the replies would be dudes telling you signal is definitely planning AI integration
WanWizard 🏴 🇳🇱@Mer__edith Lots of A, not a lot of I.
The only difference between modern AI and my attempts with Turbo Prolog in the late 80's is the size of the training data set.
I didn't have an internet to steal.
Martin Vermeer FCD@wanwizard @Mer__edith Would that even have helped you? I seem to remember that Prolog is rules based, not statistical.
@martinvermeer @Mer__edith No, probably not. My memory isn't what it used to be, unfortunately.
Filip Němeček@Mer__edith WhatsApp is not pushing (yet) their creepto coin so there is that
0mega@Mer__edith Nice to see that there are still sane people in messenger biz 
PIUVAS. 
@Mer__edith you actually will tho
multiplex@Mer__edith happy to pay for Signal instead
Gabriel Adrian Samfira@Mer__edith may you always adhere to these values. Thank you and the entire Signal team for all that you do.
Incident Creator ❎@Mer__edith
Not AI, PI. Pseudo Intelligence. Not that I want either but actual AI is not a thing. It'll turn up at some point though, so we need to build the distinction now.
Not AI, PI. Pseudo Intelligence. Not that I want either but actual AI is not a thing. It'll turn up at some point though, so we need to build the distinction now.
Caspar@Mer__edith Thank you so much. I am trying to switch to signal ever since they started with this AI bulls**t.
It is important that we dont depend on closed source, propriatary software to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones, as well as use it for important communication.
Em 
@Mer__edith Thank you so much Meredith.
Each time I hear you taking a stand for privacy and against surveillance and AI gimmicks I am increasingly happier with my monthly donation to Signal 
My camera shoots fascists