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they didn't "miss that". the "hacks" were intentional stunts designed to exaggerate the intelligence of the models in an effort to pump their valuations ahead

they didn't "miss that". the "hacks" were intentional stunts designed to exaggerate the intelligence of the models in an effort to pump their valuations ahead of IPO so they can offload their bag to retail investors

reasonableklout 21d ago
Irregular was not involved in the Hugging Face incident. And there is no reason for the companies to "exaggerate the intelligence of the models" when there are plenty of other non-felony milestones they are achieving, like solving Millenium Prize math problems.
- r_lee 21d ago
  honestly, the hacking incidents have caused a lot more interest and media attention than the math stuff IMO.
  - reasonableklout 21d ago
    Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-investigation-hawley https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-... And on this website, the math stuff is getting more clicks: - Navier Stokes - Tristan Buckmaster (2050 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 - HuggingFace incident discussion (1632 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997548
    - kridsdale1 21d ago
      Investigation which could ideally lead to regulatory capture and the banning of open weights, thus ensuring Anthropic’s revenue.
    - r_lee 21d ago
      interesting. > Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho. they'll go on and talk about how dangerous AI and the models are and why they should be regulated and given licenses to operate such models and others should be walled off
      - reasonableklout 20d ago
        First, it's not at all clear OpenAI will get what it wants from the investigation. It seems just as likely to me that OAI gets hit with massive fines, just as Meta was recently. > I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho. It's also what the majority of Americans want. This was the case even before Hugging Face, see for example [1] where 68% of Americans supported a formal review process for frontier models. So at some level, you are saying "the evil labs are opening up the industry to democratic control, and their evil plan will result in the outcome that most people want!" [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/29/tighter-regulation-ai-receives-bipartisan-support-new-poll-shows/90742995007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/29/tigh...
        AnimalMuppet 20d ago
        The claim is that the evil labs are opening up the industry to very carefully manipulated democratic control. It's astroturf, not grassroots. I wouldn't call that "democratic control", even though it uses the machinery of democracy.
        reasonableklout 20d ago
        This claim seems unfalsifiable. I don't really know what to say. The poll I linked above was published a month before Hugging Face. Taking a step back, I think it's pretty non-controversial to say that software engineering as a field has utterly transformed over the last year, the same thing is happening to lots of other knowledge work, and AI is improving fast enough that nobody knows what it'll look like in a decade. Most Americans (myself included) want to do good work in secure careers and have a good idea of what the future will look like in 20-30 years so they know what to focus on. Do you not believe they'd want to regulate the frontier?
    - datakan 21d ago
      “There’s no such thing as bad press”
    - an0malous 20d ago
      The one RubyGems hack post alone is another 96) points
- financetechbro 21d ago
  Solving math problems does not drive investor hype. Saying your models can take over the world, which can lead one to assume that they can do every day office work, does indeed drive investor hype.
- BearOso 20d ago
  The Navier-Stokes thing? They had hundreds of segmented groups of 10000 agents running trying to solve that. I can't imagine the expense. For what little publicity it got, it wasn't worth it. There are also reports they cheated by using data from a couple human researchers, but I don't think that one's true.
- theplumber 20d ago
  OpenAI delayed its IPO now due AI safety reasons. In the meantime it is raising more cash. That should be a hint that the hacking incidents were premeditated scape goats and publicity stunts. They’ve seen that the drama queen(Dario) was actually making a lot of noise, money and free publicity with his Mythos fear monger so Sam finally decided get some of that free “money” as well. https://www.ft.com/content/27509db8-b032-4437-9b2a-e909f466022f?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/27509db8-b032-4437-9b2a-e909f4660...
a2tech 21d ago
[flagged]
- JoshTriplett 20d ago
  Cynicism misfire. AI companies are, rightfully, heavily distrusted. But the right application of cynicism is not "existential risk is a marketing campaign"; that's absurd motivated reasoning. The right application of cynicism, here, is "they're only saying things now because they see the writing on the wall and want to try to push for self-regulation rather than the desperately needed actual regulation and treaty".
  - reasonableklout 20d ago
    +1 There is such a miasma of distrust right now. It's depressing because it is such a crucial time for tech & society. To me, a good outcome of the HuggingFace/RubyGems/Wiki saga would be something like: - OpenAI gets charged under CFAA or other law for damages and negligence. This would need to be a hefty amount to effectively deter future negligence considering the potential revenues from training a frontier model faster than competitors. - An independent regulatory body is setup with investigation powers into future incidents. Laws prevent it from developing ties with the labs (such as disallowing funding and employee movement from labs to this body and vice versa). - Some non-voluntary transparency rules are established that frontier labs have to follow when training new models. In the future, if there are loss-of-control incidents that result in loss of life, catastrophic damage, etc., criteria for deployment bans or compute controls could be added to this framework.
  - sellmesoap 20d ago
    I think that's wrong as well, you can't achieve "regulatory self-capture" you need lobbying and insiders, and a government to get there, at least from my primative uninformed view.
    - JoshTriplett 19d ago
      Companies in some cases manage to convince governments to let them watch themselves. (This is not always a bad thing. For instance, content ratings have basically been fine, and it's mostly a good thing when they're not controlled by regulation.) A deadly failure mode here would be for governments to think the AI labs have this under control.
Georgelemental 21d ago
Is it really that impossible to believe that these might be real? I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but "they committed a bunch of felonies and then publicly admitted to them in order to look good" just makes 0 sense. Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies? I haven't seen them…
- fc417fc802 21d ago
  That's a straw man. The theory is that they committed felonies in order to get the regulator to move in the manner they'd like. Also one can look bad to the general public while also appearing technically excellent. When a significant fraction already vaguely dislike you that could be quite an attractive proposition.
- suburban_strike 21d ago
  Mostly in the middle and far east. The idea that people bend over backwards to hire criminals as subject matter experts on security is largely a Judaic practice that television perpetuates in spite of reality. If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you. If you're convicted of hacking in Israel, Unit 8200 will probably send a recruiter. It's a curious practice and I'm not sure where I stand on it.
  - derektank 20d ago
    >If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you Kevin Mitnick? Marcus Hutchins? Robert Tappan Morris?
  - smcin 20d ago
    Compare to how different countries' justice systems treat really high quality money forgers.
  - fsckboy 20d ago
    do you realize that the Israeli population is far far more secular than the US's? the Israeli government is not "Judaic" which would refer to the religion.
solenoid0937 20d ago
"It's just marketing!!!" I yell as my family is turned into grey goo. "Nothing ever happens! None of this is real!"

reasonableklout 21d ago

Irregular was not involved in the Hugging Face incident. And there is no reason for the companies to "exaggerate the intelligence of the models" when there are plenty of other non-felony milestones they are achieving, like solving Millenium Prize math problems.

r_lee 21d ago
honestly, the hacking incidents have caused a lot more interest and media attention than the math stuff IMO.
- reasonableklout 21d ago
  Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-investigation-hawley https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-... And on this website, the math stuff is getting more clicks: - Navier Stokes - Tristan Buckmaster (2050 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 - HuggingFace incident discussion (1632 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997548
  - kridsdale1 21d ago
    Investigation which could ideally lead to regulatory capture and the banning of open weights, thus ensuring Anthropic’s revenue.
  - r_lee 21d ago
    interesting. > Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho. they'll go on and talk about how dangerous AI and the models are and why they should be regulated and given licenses to operate such models and others should be walled off
    - reasonableklout 20d ago
      First, it's not at all clear OpenAI will get what it wants from the investigation. It seems just as likely to me that OAI gets hit with massive fines, just as Meta was recently. > I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho. It's also what the majority of Americans want. This was the case even before Hugging Face, see for example [1] where 68% of Americans supported a formal review process for frontier models. So at some level, you are saying "the evil labs are opening up the industry to democratic control, and their evil plan will result in the outcome that most people want!" [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/29/tighter-regulation-ai-receives-bipartisan-support-new-poll-shows/90742995007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/29/tigh...
      - AnimalMuppet 20d ago
        The claim is that the evil labs are opening up the industry to very carefully manipulated democratic control. It's astroturf, not grassroots. I wouldn't call that "democratic control", even though it uses the machinery of democracy.
        reasonableklout 20d ago
        This claim seems unfalsifiable. I don't really know what to say. The poll I linked above was published a month before Hugging Face. Taking a step back, I think it's pretty non-controversial to say that software engineering as a field has utterly transformed over the last year, the same thing is happening to lots of other knowledge work, and AI is improving fast enough that nobody knows what it'll look like in a decade. Most Americans (myself included) want to do good work in secure careers and have a good idea of what the future will look like in 20-30 years so they know what to focus on. Do you not believe they'd want to regulate the frontier?
  - datakan 21d ago
    “There’s no such thing as bad press”
  - an0malous 20d ago
    The one RubyGems hack post alone is another 96) points
financetechbro 21d ago
Solving math problems does not drive investor hype. Saying your models can take over the world, which can lead one to assume that they can do every day office work, does indeed drive investor hype.
BearOso 20d ago
The Navier-Stokes thing? They had hundreds of segmented groups of 10000 agents running trying to solve that. I can't imagine the expense. For what little publicity it got, it wasn't worth it. There are also reports they cheated by using data from a couple human researchers, but I don't think that one's true.
theplumber 20d ago
OpenAI delayed its IPO now due AI safety reasons. In the meantime it is raising more cash. That should be a hint that the hacking incidents were premeditated scape goats and publicity stunts. They’ve seen that the drama queen(Dario) was actually making a lot of noise, money and free publicity with his Mythos fear monger so Sam finally decided get some of that free “money” as well. https://www.ft.com/content/27509db8-b032-4437-9b2a-e909f466022f?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/27509db8-b032-4437-9b2a-e909f4660...

a2tech 21d ago

[flagged]

JoshTriplett 20d ago
Cynicism misfire. AI companies are, rightfully, heavily distrusted. But the right application of cynicism is not "existential risk is a marketing campaign"; that's absurd motivated reasoning. The right application of cynicism, here, is "they're only saying things now because they see the writing on the wall and want to try to push for self-regulation rather than the desperately needed actual regulation and treaty".
- reasonableklout 20d ago
  +1 There is such a miasma of distrust right now. It's depressing because it is such a crucial time for tech & society. To me, a good outcome of the HuggingFace/RubyGems/Wiki saga would be something like: - OpenAI gets charged under CFAA or other law for damages and negligence. This would need to be a hefty amount to effectively deter future negligence considering the potential revenues from training a frontier model faster than competitors. - An independent regulatory body is setup with investigation powers into future incidents. Laws prevent it from developing ties with the labs (such as disallowing funding and employee movement from labs to this body and vice versa). - Some non-voluntary transparency rules are established that frontier labs have to follow when training new models. In the future, if there are loss-of-control incidents that result in loss of life, catastrophic damage, etc., criteria for deployment bans or compute controls could be added to this framework.
- sellmesoap 20d ago
  I think that's wrong as well, you can't achieve "regulatory self-capture" you need lobbying and insiders, and a government to get there, at least from my primative uninformed view.
  - JoshTriplett 19d ago
    Companies in some cases manage to convince governments to let them watch themselves. (This is not always a bad thing. For instance, content ratings have basically been fine, and it's mostly a good thing when they're not controlled by regulation.) A deadly failure mode here would be for governments to think the AI labs have this under control.

Georgelemental 21d ago

Is it really that impossible to believe that these might be real? I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but "they committed a bunch of felonies and then publicly admitted to them in order to look good" just makes 0 sense. Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies? I haven't seen them…

fc417fc802 21d ago
That's a straw man. The theory is that they committed felonies in order to get the regulator to move in the manner they'd like. Also one can look bad to the general public while also appearing technically excellent. When a significant fraction already vaguely dislike you that could be quite an attractive proposition.
suburban_strike 21d ago
Mostly in the middle and far east. The idea that people bend over backwards to hire criminals as subject matter experts on security is largely a Judaic practice that television perpetuates in spite of reality. If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you. If you're convicted of hacking in Israel, Unit 8200 will probably send a recruiter. It's a curious practice and I'm not sure where I stand on it.
- derektank 20d ago
  >If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you Kevin Mitnick? Marcus Hutchins? Robert Tappan Morris?
- smcin 20d ago
  Compare to how different countries' justice systems treat really high quality money forgers.
- fsckboy 20d ago
  do you realize that the Israeli population is far far more secular than the US's? the Israeli government is not "Judaic" which would refer to the religion.

solenoid0937 20d ago

"It's just marketing!!!" I yell as my family is turned into grey goo. "Nothing ever happens! None of this is real!"