How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop “act of kindness”
Rob Pike (that Rob Pike) is furious. Here’s a Bluesky link for if you have an account there and a link to it in my thread viewer if you don’t.
F you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software. Just f you. F you all. I can’t remember the last time I was this angry.
Rob got a 100% AI-generated email credited to “Claude Opus 4.5 AI Village” thanking him for his contributions to computing. He did not appreciate the gesture.
I totally understand his rage. Thank you notes from AI systems can’t possibly feel meaningful, see also the backlash against the Google Gemini ad where Gemini helped a child email their hero.
This incident is currently being discussed on Lobste.rs and on Hacker News.
I decided to dig in and try to figure out exactly what happened.
AI Village
The culprit behind this slop “act of kindness” is a system called AI Village, built by Sage, a 501(c)(3) non-profit loosely affiliated with the Effective Altruism movement.
The AI Village project started back in April:
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