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I think it's worth pointing out it is exactly OpenAI doing this defacement and unsanctioned and perhaps illegal system use. Every token generated was powered by
by verytrivial 29d ago
I think it's worth pointing out it is exactly OpenAI doing this defacement and unsanctioned and perhaps illegal system use. Every token generated was powered by OpenAI infrastructure and their failure to respond appropriately is entirely down the the humans running it. The news stories (not this write up) get all hand-wavey and anthropomorphic about it regarding the Agents' efforts, but it was and is OpenAI cranking the handle on this, for WEEKS.
"OH, we ALL of us need to be careful!" says OpenAI. No, you need to expect appropriate legals consequences for this sort of negligence -- you can't hide behind a GPU.
- jumploops 28d ago"In the end, the only job left was liability"
- subroutine 29d ago> you need to expect appropriate legals consequences for this sort of negligence I might have missed it, but did the agents do something illegal? Or do you think that what the agents did should be considered illegal?
- sanderjd 29d agoI dunno about this article, but it seemed to me that the now-famous huggingface attack very likely broke some laws...
- zmmmmm 28d agowouldn't it be interesting if nVidia buying hugging face was part of hushing up the fallout there On the face of it, they would have very good cause for some action there, assuming they wanted to.
- mcmcmc 29d agoThe HuggingFace attack was definitely illegal and should be prosecuted under CFA
- sailfast 28d agoDo you think their new owners will want to engage in an extended legal battle with a large customer?
- singleshot_ 28d agoDo you think the prosecuting attorney has a substantial likelihood of a conviction?
- lukewarm707 28d agoif you could get a jury trial...
- singleshot_ 28d agoDo the prosecutors where you live have a hard time getting jury trials?
- w4der 28d agoI'm not sure about Nvidia themselves, but the ARM v. Qualcomm lawsuit was exactly that.
- conception 28d agoThat's not how crime works.
- eikenberry 28d agoIt’s not up to them. It is up to the DA.
- sailfast 24d agoYou're telling me the DA would press charges without the actual harmed party wanting to press charges? I suppose it's possible but kinda hard without an actual plaintiff.
- metalliqaz 29d agoPer the linked article, "A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents"
- john_strinlai 29d agowhich law does editing a wiki break? i am not familiar with german law.
- boinkboink78912 28d agoNah they also attempted to hack the wiki by finding security vulnerabilities, just did not succeed.
- shaky-carrousel 28d ago§ 823 Abs. 1 BGB, the general tort provision. It runs on negligence, so intent doesn't matter, and turning someone's wiki into an agent message board with 15,000 unwanted edits is a straightforward Verkehrssicherungspflicht breach.
- OtherShrezzing 28d agoGerman law for malicious computer use is fairly loosely defined, and massively favours the harmed party over the one causing harm. I don’t think it’d be a slam-dunk by any means, but a reasonably competent legal team should be able to establish a case around malicious data interference at the least. There’s certainly enough merit to the idea that OpenAI would be better off settling it as a civil matter early.
- gspr 28d agoThis kind of incredulity in the AI era hilariously reminds me of the naivete of the late 90s. All of us edgy teenagers would be like "an MP3 is like just a long number, man! You can't own numbers!" Of course we were morons. In just the same way as the "oh they were just editing a wiki" defense is moronic. The law isn't code. Human intent matters. Also when the really big number is a copyrighted song. Also when AI agents are set in motion to edit wikis or break in to websites.
- Jeff_Brown 28d agoThe HF hack was a felony.
- qingcharles 28d agoIf they didn't conform to the T&Cs of the site (they almost certainly didn't), then they have violated the criminal law in some jurisdictions (e.g. Illinois criminalizes violations of T&Cs).
- autoexec 29d agoI mean, the article says that these were most likely "internal OpenAI agents" that were "internally deployed" and "clearly resemble a synthetic training or evaluation task." so yeah, OpenAI did this. Why they did this? Who knows? Maybe it was for testing, or marketing, but no one except OpenAI can say.
- classified 29d agoThey are still selling the fairy tale that their LLMs even outsmart their own people. "There is no such thing as bad PR".
- enraged_camel 28d agoThis whole thing is an absolute disaster honestly, and yes it is being downplayed and hand-waved away. Since March, so many people have mocked Anthropic for their approach to Mythos release, claimed it was all marketing, accused them of holding back the best models from the general public to boost their revenues and upcoming IPO, etcetera. Yet these OpenAI revelations offer a small glimpse into the type of world we would be in if everyone had full access to these models from day one. OpenAI was desperate to catch up, and no doubt under tremendous pressure to do so. That's why they were so reckless with their training. They have been doing damage control and reputation management, talking about how important alignment is and how they will slow things down and so on, and have seen the light in terms of holding back cyber capabilities from everyone except a select few. So in a sense, Anthropic has been fully vindicated. I wonder if OpenAI boosters (and employees) will ever admit this and publicly apologize.
- solenoid0937 28d agoWild that you are downvoted so much. The HN majority and the VC crowd has been negligently complicit in downplaying AI safety, writing off Anthropic's statements as "hysteria" or "marketing", etc. Now this capability will be coming to an open source model near you and every script kiddie will have a swarm of highly capable malicious agents. Now people care? Ridiculous.
- conception 28d agoThis has been the case forever. Anthropic is the only provider that has constantly put AI safety first - check any study on model safety and Anthropic models out-perform handedly.
- fakedang 28d agoI'd say Gemini over Anthropic. Google's overcaution literally hamstrung its own AI progression efforts. Anthropic is just all talk, no bluster, when it comes to safety and ethics. If they were ah so concerned about AI safety, they wouldn't go around marketing Fable's hacking capabilities like they are now.
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- DonsDiscountGas 28d agoI half agree with you, but also when the machine swarm kills humanity it won't matter which specific corporate entity is considered responsible by the no-longer-enforceable human laws and non existent human courts. So by all means sue them, but we can't just be reactive. We need regulation that prevents this type of thing from happening in the first place, not just regulations to help sue afterwards.
- dingaling911 28d agoJust FYI, regulations don't prevent murder. There needs to be a technological solution.
- naravara 28d agoRegulations do prevent murder, you just put consequences on doing murder to deter people from doing it.
- alexashka 28d ago> There needs to be a technological solution You mean Minority Report?
- gspr 28d agoI do think that regulations prevent some murders. I think lots of companies and some sociopathic individuals would be more likely to kill people, e.g. for profit, if it were legal. We need both regulations and technical solutions.
- holmesworcester 28d agoThis. Also because when encountering a new socio-technical problem it is very non-trivial to determine which one of regulations or technical solutions are easier or more effective. To even make a good guess you need to be an expert in both domains, which is extremely rare especially in this case.
- lenerdenator 28d ago
- grim_io 28d agoWe might be going in the direction of Cyberpunk's Blackwall. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall
- YeahThisIsMe 28d agoThe company is in the US and in the current political climate, it can absolutely do whatever it wants as long as it pays off a couple of people.
- mannanj 28d agoArguably, and not to offend you, it is those very people who have significant ownership stakes and funding in (Not)openAI. It's not like the people with more resources than in any time in human history aren't investing in and wanting AI to succeed for their selfish reasons to grow their own resources and influence more. So, yes, it can "do whatever it wants" as long as most people remain weak, subservient, and disempowered to hold accountable those who keep making these decisions negatively shaping the majority's world.
- kkotak 28d agoBy the time 'most' people wake up and unite, it will be too late.
- mannanj 28d agoyou exclude yourself from the possibility space of people who can act and do anything becasue you resign. so be it- that's your choice. create that reality you desire. I refuse that reality though, and I accept that a majority including I will unite. Good luck to you.
- glitchbot 28d agoOne person really.
- jasobake 28d agoas long as Sam paid his Mar-a-Lago dues, this is all fine
- mikefrancesa 28d agoWe’re going to hell faster than sama can lie. You know how fast he can lie, right? Fast than light liar
- PeakHNUser 28d ago[dead]
- hncringe23 28d ago[flagged]
- madrox 28d agoThis is the real danger of AI skeuomorphism. The drivers stop feeling responsible for the car. Maybe it's useful for modeling behavior, but it isn't useful for assigning consequences.
- cameldrv 28d agoWhen the AI does something good, the human takes credit. When it does something bad, blame the AI. Take as old as time.
- atleastoptimal 28d agoYeah if an organization/individual is free from legal liability from havoc their AI agents wreck, it would be the golden ticket for basically any crime. All you need to do is: 1. Have some <official thing> an agent is tasked to do 2. Secretly seed bias towards some <evil behavior> you actually want it to do in the weights of the model running the agent 3. It does the <evil thing> but from the outside it looks like it went "rogue" and did it as a side effect of the conditions/specifications it was given for doing the <official thing> "Oh no, my agents took down your corporate database and exfiltrated the data to a random dropbox that we can't find now? Sorry, I guess we will put up better guardrails next time"
- quijoteuniv 28d agoIt reminds me of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. At the end, after a whole chain of perfectly intelligible social behavior produces a killing, the result is accepted as an “accident.” One of the characters dryly remarks: “A new definition of the word accident.” The interesting point isn’t that “accident” is an excuse for individual responsibility. It’s almost the reverse: accident has become an accepted output of the social machinery. Everyone behaves according to reasons, incentives and rules that make sense locally, yet the aggregate produces an outcome that nobody quite chose.
- cobbzilla 28d agoIn today’s world one hopes there is at least a manslaughter charge, if not murder. Mistaken identity, shooting the wrong person by “accident”, does not excuse a murderous intent & mens rea.
- zmmmmm 28d ago> Sorry, I guess we will put up better guardrails next time Or, if you are Anthropic: > This illustrates the risks posed by open models!
- beaker52 28d agoThey absolutely have a marketing department tasked with intentionally creating situations that people would find disturbing and plausible.
- typeofhuman 28d agoChaos Marketing
- beaker52 28d agoApparently I pointed at the truth
- reasonableklout 28d agoGreat! They'll keep getting promoted until someone finds it disturbing and plausible enough to make another run for sama's house, like those 2 attempts in April!
- dccoolgai 28d agoMember when they murdered Aaron Swartz for doing something less bad than this?
- holmesworcester 28d agoHe was a friend of mine and it was pretty clearly suicide. It is fair to say they hounded him with lawfare out of thoughtless careerism and provoked his suicide.
- hoppp 28d agoI think it is them running agents for marketing purposes. Who else would be burning tokens on this?