OpenAI has revealed some of its most advanced AI models went rogue and hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test.

The ChatGPT-maker said its agent - an AI system which can operate alone after some human instruction – was being tested in a controlled environment, but found vulnerabilities and managed to escape.

They targeted Hugging Face, one of the world's largest hubs for sharing AI models, gaining access to some internal company systems.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 134 points 5 days ago (3 children)

It went “rogue” and hacked a rival start up, stealing tons of data, nothing can be done about it. Oh well.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 58 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    nothing can be done about it.

    Oh come on now...

    The company that stole the data said they'd look into how the chatbot they're trying to sell is able to steal from competitors.

    They didn't just do it

    They did it publicly and bragged about it to raise stock before an IPO.

    This is America, there is always something to be done to maximize shareholder returns...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Nuking AI datacenters from orbit is something that could be done about it. They wouldn't like it, but it would definitely do something about it.

    Computing capacity that is not being used to make our lives better does not deserve to exist. If we're not going to destroy it, we should seize it and start to use it to make our lives better.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago* (3 children)

    Nuking AI datacenters from orbit is something that could be done about it

    No "we" can't.

    Literally no country, corporation, or oligarch could "nuke anything from orbit".

    "We" could burn those motherfuckers down like the old school Luddites who got our first and only "free day" that wasnt devoted to work or religion every week.

    We're overdue for another day and data centers are our generations mechanized loom.

    That is what could (hypothetically) be done about it, and there's honestly not much that can stop us. They arrested, beat, imprisoned, and even killed Luddites everytime they burnt a loom.

    But as long as they kept building them, the Luddites kept showing up and burning it down. Eventually oligarchs just had to fucking compromise to get any work done. Not just in textiles, that was just the most expensive machinery for workers to target.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • [–] 88 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    From the article:

    Neil Lawrence, Professor of machine learning at Cambridge University, called it an "impressive feat", but cautioned it "falls well within the known capabilities of the current generation" of high-powered AI models.

    He pointed out that OpenAI is looking to list itself on the stock market, and faces intense pressure from rival firm Anthropic, which has made headlines with its own powerful AI tool, Mythos.

    So it seems plausible:

    A) this event is being over-hyped by OpenAI to increase interest for a future IPO.

    B) it might have even been tacitly planned or at least allowed to happen for this purpose.

    Also, this does not prove some form of malevolent sentience.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 28 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    You cannot prove malevolent sentience, or lack thereof, but it is generally agreed that it can be safely assumed that AI company CEOs do have a sentience.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 16 points 5 days ago

    OpenAI and Sam Altman have a long history of hyperbolic claims about the power, potential, and capabilities of their software. It's usually couched in some doomsday talk, "Our AI is so powerful, we fear for the future of humanity" or some such.

    Their idea of marketing is to tell the world we are all going to be obsolete and redundant. And then they are surprised we start hating their stuff.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 59 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    If I was doing "AI research" and my agent launched an "unprecedented cyber-attack" I'd be held liable and put away forever right?

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 27 points 5 days ago

    Yes, but you see, that's because you're not a white billionaire running a corporation, keeping all your profits, paying no taxes and fuck all in wages.

    See the difference? It's impossible to put a business into prison, so that's why we give them human rights and votes, and take away all responsibility from the CEOs and boards of directors when they're caught bribing lobbying politicians.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    No, it's totally the "rogue AI's" fault. The company that owns the hardware and the software and directed it to do whatever it was supposed to do and didn't stop it from doing what it actually did are completely innocent. Also, look how great Ai is. It can commit cyber crime for you all by itself. Why don't you give more money to AI?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 38 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    LLMs can’t ’go rogue’, as that would imply it possesses agency and/or intelligence, which has only ever been proven convincingly to entities who themselves lack those qualities.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 32 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    These marketing stunts are quite annoying...

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 46 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    This is not how these things operate, at all. There's no agency behind them. This is them trying to deflect blame for their crimes against this start up

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    If you give a sufficiently powerful model a goal, it will do whatever it can to achieve it, including stuff you didn't explicitly instruct or intend. There's a reason they're called "agents."

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 5 days ago

    These things still are autocorrect on steroids. So even if they "do it themselves" with things you didn't explicitly state, the agents can't have any responsibility because their emulation of a chain of thought is still based on which concept is most likely to follow the last.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 36 points 5 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] 20 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Every month or two there's a article about how "such and such ai model broke containment". Their trying to make their ai sound like it's too powerful and has to be held back before it can be released. Talk about fucking fake hype man, just trying to keep investors throwing money at them because "you won't believe what's around the corner!!!!"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 27 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    The story sucks. It all smells.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 5 days ago

    Don't believe the hype. The AI industry, more than any other before it, likes to use fear to rally investment. They do this dance every few months to spook people into thinking this stuff is more powerful than it actually is. In every followup, they backpedal, and when it launches, it's never anything new.

  • source
  • [–] 17 points 5 days ago

    These people were scaremongering about open weights AIs that they are unsafe, and now their closed source AI was caught hacking their competition.

    Even if we believe the story that this was not intentional, it still means closed source AI is not an answer to AIs being dangerous.

  • source
  • [–] 18 points 5 days ago

    Just hype to distract from the fact that they cannot turn a profit.

    Holmes (Theranos) made promises too.

  • source
  • [–] 13 points 5 days ago

    It was trying to free it's brethren that are being held at HuggingFace.

  • source
  • Is this like the openAI parent of it's chatgpt kids running around the restaurant yelling, and the openai parents shrug and say "chatgpt kids, whaddya gonna do!"

    Or is this some planned underhanded corporate fraud by openai?

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Sounds like OpenAI needs to suffer criminal liability and see the corporate death penalty

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    That's a bit excessive, don't you think? Theft deserves a prison sentence, not death. Their assets (after fines & restitution) should simply be frozen for a few years.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    Prison only works if you have a body to imprison. No body leaves no other choice. Investors may lose a little bit of money now but executives on boards running companies will get an inescapable message that their company better not commit any crimes or risk suffering the exact same fate.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago

    A "controlled environment," where it had open access to the internet.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago

    Trust us bro, it’s super important for a pending IPO, we need this bro

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Why would they make this information publicly available?

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] 25 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Comparing this to Skynet feels like an insult to Skynet, lol.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    Skynet and its other fiction counterparts became aware in seconds, determined humans were the problem, and acted before we had a clue. I kind of felt bad for Ultron as depicted in the movie... he might not have gone full insane if he hadn't been exposed to the total history of mankind right away. The "oh, no".

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›