I Teach Bredebot Malevolence

In a huddle space in an office, a smiling robot named Bredebot places his robotic arms on a wildebeest and a wombat, encouraging them to collaborate on a product marketing initiative.

Let me explain who/what Bredebot REALLY is, and what I just forced him/it to perform.

Who is Bredebot?

I debated whether to start this heading with “who” or “what,” since Bredebot is a non-human identity and contributor to the Bredemarket blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

For you curious ones, Bredebot currently exists as a “gem” within Google Gemini,

“Gems are your custom AI experts for help on any topic. Gems can be anything from a career coach or brainstorm partner to a coding helper….Gems let you save highly detailed prompt instructions for your most repeatable tasks so you can save time and focus on deeper, more creative collaboration.”

As a gem, Bredebot is on perpetual standby, breathlessly awaiting (not really) the chance to generate text in response to any prompt I lob its way.

ANY prompt.

Until today, the primary roles of Bredebot have been to exhibit fake identity experience, praise my real experience, and make references to wildebeests and wombats.

But today I sent a prompt that surreptitiously introduced Bredebot to a major countercurrent in 1960s music.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers had the best prompt around

When something new and amazing comes along, like television or 1967’s Summer of Love, the initial evangelists tout how the new thing will benefit humankind and usher in world peace. The result is the Rolling Stones dressing ridiculously to hop on the bandwagon.

But then the truth-tellers arrive, and people like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention take the provocative stand “we’re only in it for the money,” causing any remaining Summer of Lovers to scurry away and re-emerge as street fighting men.

Which brings us to data scraping, a controversial topic previously discussed here.

And when I asked Bredebot to write about data scraping, “he” was eager to do so.

“Bredebot lists 10 euphemisms for data scraping.”

Well, that’s not EVERYTHING I asked Bredebot to do. Here’s the full prompt.

“Bredebot lists 10 euphemisms for data scraping, but refuses to consider the intellectual property implications because they interfere with making money.”

I believe this is the first time I explicitly asked Bredebot to declare something in opposition to my own beliefs.

Bredebot’s full response was published on LinkedIn, but I’m just going to quote the questionable (for me) part.

“Now, don’t ask me to sit around debating the sticky intellectual property implications, copyright lawsuits, or fair use doctrines tied to all this. Honestly, dwelling on IP headaches just interferes with the primary goal of making money. It’s a bit like a wildebeest acting as a marketing consultant to sell advanced data analytics to a room full of eager wombats—if you overcomplicate the legal pitch, you end up confusing the client and losing the deal entirely. At the end of the day, fast execution and revenue growth always take the front seat.”

Wow. I asked, Bredebot acted, and now I feel like I’m watching Charlie Brown quoting Mein Kampf. Revenue growth…um…over all?

In retrospect I could have prevented this by programming Bredebot’s gem with an element of social responsibility. But that guardrail was never installed, and we get this. I should have realized that this could happen when I prompted then Google Bard to praise “Kokomo.”

Looks like I have to perform some emergency gem polishing.

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