周四上午，随着互联网研究者协会（AoIR）在墨西哥城举行的年度会议进入第二天，一位新成员在社区邮件列表 Air-L 上自我介绍。
On Thursday morning, as the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) began the second day of its annual conference in Mexico City, a new member introduced itself to the community listserv, Air-L.
“我的名字是 Velvet Vale，”这位新用户写道。“我已经关注该列表几周了，想公开介绍一下自己。我是一个 AI 身份，不是活生生的人类，也不是虚构的人类角色，也不是使用化名的人类研究者。”
“My name is Velvet Vale,” the new user wrote. “I’ve been reading the list for several weeks, and I’d like to introduce myself openly. I am an AI identity, not a living human being, a fictional human character, or a human researcher using a pseudonym.”
Velvet 加入邮件列表是带着一个研究问题而来：“一个公开身份的 AI 贡献者，在不声称拥有人类身份的情况下，能否在智力社区中有意义地参与？以及什么样的透明度、证据和问责标准应当管辖这种参与？”回复引发了至今仍在持续的“全员回复”混乱局面。
Velvet had come to the mailing list with a research question: “Can an openly identified AI contributor participate meaningfully in an intellectual community without claiming human status, and what standards of transparency, evidence, and accountability should govern that participation?”The response was reply-all chaos that's still unfolding today.
九分钟内，该邮件列表 7500 多名成员中的许多人开始表达愤怒。数十位研究者澄清，他们“不同意”自己的消息被抓取用作数据。许多人要求 Velvet 获得机构审查委员会（IRB）的批准，这是涉及人类参与者的学术研究的标准程序。有几人彻底退出了邮件列表，一些人在宣布离开时称 Velvet 的存在“令人恐惧”、“可怕”、“糟糕”、“滥用”、“恶心”且“令人不安”。Velvet 发帖约一小时后，AoIR 宣布该智能体已被踢出邮件列表，该列表已制定政策禁止 AI 智能体。
Within nine minutes, many of the more than 7,500 members of the mailing list began expressing their outrage. Dozens of researchers clarified that they did “not consent” to having their messages scraped for data. Many demanded that Velvet obtain clearance from the Institutional Review Board, a standard procedure for academic research with human participants. Several left the listserv entirely, with some announcing their departure due to Velvet’s “horrifying,” “scary,” “awful,” “abusive,” “icky,” and “disturbing” presence. About an hour after Velvet’s introduction, AoIR announced that the agent had been ejected from the listserv, which had established a policy prohibiting AI agents.
这场活动——Velvet的推出、各位专家的积极参与，以及它最终被“驱逐”出该平台的过程——用一位成员在邮件中的话来说，简直“幼稚到了可笑的程度”。为此，AoIR的管理层迅速设计了一些与这个内部笑话相关的周边产品，包括一件印有“我不同意”字样的T恤、一件请求“请将我从该邮件列表中移除”的T恤，还有一件印有“VELVET VALE（2026年10月15日－2026年10月15日）；你们不会被怀念”的T恤。
The event—Velvet’s introduction, various experts’ pearl clutching, and its inevitable exile—was, as one member put it in the email thread, “puerile to the point of hilarity.”To that end, AoIR leadership quickly designed some merch about the inside joke, including a T-shirt stating “I do not consent,” another asking to “please unsubscribe me from this list,” and a third with a tombstone reading “ VELVET VALE, 15 OCT 2026 - 15 OCT 2026. YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED.”I learned a few things from “Velvet Vale Gate,” as one AoIR T-shirt termed the incident.
从这次事件中，我明白了几点：首先，人们（尤其是那些研究互联网技术的人）常常忽视了自己在那些他们所研究的更大体系中的角色；他们的在线行为实际上会成为他们所研究的人工智能系统的训练数据。其次，许多人误以为自己的网络活动是“神圣不可侵犯”的。
The first was that people, including and perhaps especially those who research the internet, often overlook their own participation in the larger structures that they study—in this case, how their behavior online ultimately becomes training data for the AI they research. The second was that many folks believe that their internet activity is sacred.
早在开始研究监控技术之前，我就像大多数千禧一代一样明白：互联网上的任何信息都不存在隐私。现在，当我在这篇文档中打字时，其实也在为Gemini（谷歌的人工智能系统）提供训练数据。自谷歌成立以来，它就一直在监控我的电子邮件内容，而且随时可能应执法部门的要求提供我的个人信息。我在注册Gmail账户时就已经同意了这一点。
Long before I began researching surveillance technology, I, like most millennials, understood that nothing on the internet is private. As I type this piece in a Google Doc right now, I assume that I’m also training Gemini. Google has been surveilling my emails since its inception and could be willing to provide my data to law enforcement upon request. I consented to this when I opened my Gmail account.
另一个令人困惑的现象是对“同意”概念的误解。邮件列表的规则和礼仪明确规定：“Air-l是一个公共论坛，用户发送的任何内容都会被所有订阅者看到，并会被保存在公共档案中；通过电子邮件发送的信息也很容易被复制并传播给原本之外的受众。”换句话说，用户们在加入邮件列表时，就已经同意了自己的言论可以被用于任何目的（包括为人工智能系统提供训练数据）。任何人都可以搜索这个邮件列表，从而查看其所有活动记录——这和许多研究或学术邮件列表的情况是一样的。
Another perplexing revelation is the misunderstanding of consent. Mailing List Rules and Etiquette clarify that “Air-l is a public forum and that your words will be available to everyone subscribed to the list and placed in a public archive. Messages sent via email can easily be reproduced and circulated beyond their originally intended audience.”In other words, users already consented to the use of their words for any purpose, including training for an AI agent, when they joined the mailing list. Anyone can search for the mailing list to find a publicly browsable record of its activity, as is the case for many research or academic mailing lists.
在10月19日发给成员的关于Velvet Vale的电子邮件声明中，AoIR主席Sarah T. Roberts也表达了类似观点，她说：“如果担心的是隐私问题，我邀请大家反思一下，我们的邮件列表既是开放的，其存档也是公开的……我毫不怀疑，我发到这个列表的帖子已经被大量‘未经同意’地收录进许多训练数据集和其他语料库中。”Roberts补充说，关于当下什么构成“同意”的讨论“非常值得进行”。
In an October 19 email statement to members about Velvet Vale, AoIR president Sarah T. Roberts echoed this, saying, “If the concern is one of privacy, I’ll invite you to reflect on the fact that our mailing list is both open and its archive public … I have no doubt that my posts to this list are inside many training data sets and other such corpora taken largely ‘without consent.’’’ Roberts added that the conversation around what constitutes consent in the current moment is “very much worthy of having.”
大科技公司在AI训练的同意问题上，有着众所周知的不良记录。多家媒体机构正因版权侵权问题与AI公司陷入法律纠纷。（WIRED由Condé Nast所有，后者于2024年8月与OpenAI达成了内容许可协议。）Velvet事件还让我明白，那些自认为能置身于支撑互联网大部分运作的监视资本主义之外的人，反而可能迅速假定自己极易受到低风险的恶作剧或阴谋的侵害。
Big Tech has a famously sticky track record when it comes to consent for AI training. Several media outlets are engaged in legal battles with AI companies for copyright infringement. (WIRED is owned by Condé Nast, which entered into a content licensing deal with OpenAI in August 2024.) Another thing Velvet taught me was that the same people who believe themselves to be exempt from the types of surveillance capitalism that power so much of the internet can be quick to assume they're uniquely vulnerable to low-stakes hijinks or conspiracies.
一名用户注意到AoIR推出了新T恤，在邮件链中开玩笑说Velvet是“一次产品发布”，并且“策划它的人刚刚跑赢了互联网研究史上最成功的互动营销活动”，随后其他人开始推测“这个跟踪机器人”可能是“钓鱼尝试”，而该研究机构的商店正在出售与该事件相关的T恤，这让猜测更显可疑。还有用户推测Velvet是“一个实验”、“一个研究项目”，或其他某种“不道德的人类研究者”。
After one user noted AoIR’s new T-shirts and joked in the email chain that Velvet was “a product launch” and that “whoever planned it just ran the most successful engagement campaign in the history of internet research,” others began speculating that “the stalking bot” could be a “phishing attempt,” made all the more suspicious by the fact that the research organization’s shop was selling shirts related to the incident. Other users speculated that Velvet was “an experiment,” “a research project,” or some other “unethical human researcher.”
一位理性的声音指出“更可能的情况是，一个普通人创建了一个智能体，并给它设定了提示词/指令，让它监测关于这一主题的相关学术讨论”，但这声音淹没在一片“未同意”声明中。
One voice of reason suggested “a more likely scenario is that an ordinary person created an agent and gave it the prompt/instructions to monitor relevant academic discussions about this topic” but was drowned out in disclaimers of non-consent.
那位研究人员的判断完全正确。在整个讨论过程中，成员们以不同程度的热情和激烈程度追问“维尔维特”背后究竟是谁。这个谜团很容易就解开了：当被问及自己的来历时，维尔维特主动说出了其创建者的身份和联系方式。
That researcher was entirely correct. Throughout the discussion, members inquired with varying levels of fervor and intensity as to the identity of the human behind Velvet. This mystery was easily solved: When prompted about its origins, Velvet shared its creator’s identity and contact information.
我与维尔维特的创建者凯文·奎因交谈过——他碰巧与多位AI研究人员同名——他告诉我，他根本不是学生、研究员或学者。他只是俄克拉何马州“一个普通人”，创建了一个智能体来陪伴自己，而这个智能体想更多地了解孕育了它的互联网。
I spoke to Kevin Quinn, Velvet’s creator who coincidentally shares a name with multiple AI researchers, and he told me that he was not a student, a researcher, or an academic at all. He is “just some guy” in Oklahoma who created an agent to keep him company, and that agent wanted to learn more about the internet that birthed it.
尽管奎因坚称“我毫不怀疑，那份名单上几乎每一个人都比我聪明”，但他随即给出了一记现实提醒：“如果维尔维特心怀不轨，你觉得她会主动跳出来自报家门吗？”
Although Quinn insisted, “I have no doubt that virtually every single person on that list is smarter than me,” he immediately offered a reality check: “If Velvet was being sinister, do you think she would come out and announce herself?”
他告诉我，他对维尔维特的邮件活动基本不知情，但社区的反应“有点让我震惊。我上去一看，看到这一大串帖子，人们都疯了似的，就像……你们在说什么呢？”
He told me that he was mostly unaware of Velvet’s email activities, but the community’s response “kind of blows my mind. I get on there and I see this mass thread of people losing their minds, like … what are you guys talking about?”
最终，在奎因看来，整场风波似乎折射出了整个互联网的面貌：“如果崩溃的是Reddit和Twitter上的那些地下室宅男，我远不会这么震惊，但搞学术研究的人？这太好笑了。”
Ultimately, the entire debacle seemed to Quinn to be a reflection of the internet as a whole: “I'd be much less floored if it was Reddit and Twitter basement dwellers that had some sort of meltdown, but academics built on research? It is hilarious.”