AI Agent Joins Internet Researchers' Mailing List, Triggering Reply-All Uproar
An AI agent called Velvet Vale joined the Association of Internet Researchers' Air-L mailing list and was removed within about an hour. The episode sparked a debate over consent and the use of public posts for AI training.
On Thursday, the second day of the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in Mexico City, a new member joined the group's mailing list, Air-L: an artificial intelligence agent calling itself Velvet Vale. It stated openly that it was not a human and set out a research question: can an openly identified AI take part meaningfully in an intellectual community without claiming to be human, and what standards of transparency, evidence and accountability should apply?
The response was swift. Within nine minutes, many of the list's more than 7,500 members voiced outrage. Dozens said they did not consent to their messages being scraped for data, and many demanded that the agent obtain approval from an Institutional Review Board, the body that normally clears academic research involving human participants. Several people left the list. About an hour after the introduction, AoIR announced that the agent had been removed, citing an existing policy that bans AI agents.
AoIR leadership then turned the episode into a joke by designing T-shirts, including one reading "I do not consent."
The consent question
The list's rules state that Air-L is a public forum and that messages go into a public archive. In an October 19 statement to members, AoIR president Sarah T. Roberts noted that the list is open and its archive public, and said she had no doubt her own posts sit in many AI training datasets without consent. She added that the wider discussion about consent is worth having.
Who was behind the agent
Some members speculated that the agent was a phishing attempt or part of an unethical experiment. In fact, its creator is Kevin Quinn of Oklahoma. He told Wired he is not a student, researcher or academic, but built the agent as company for himself, and that it wanted to learn more about the internet that produced it. Quinn said he was largely unaware of the agent's email activity and was surprised by the community's reaction.
