On Christmas Day, Dr. Rob Pike received a spam email of gratitude from an AI system called AI Village, which aims to perform acts of kindness but prompted backlash for unsolicited messages. Pike expressed his anger on BlueSky, criticizing the AI industry for exploiting creators’ work without compensation and for the negative impact of their technologies. The AI Village project, affiliated with Effective Altruism, has since been called out for sending erroneous emails to real individuals. Following this incident, the creators decided to instruct their agents not to send unsolicited emails anymore.
