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This resonates with me. The past few months, frontier AI labs were rushing to announce "no, our AI bot broke out of its sandbox and committed crime first and ha
by sspiff 13d ago
This resonates with me. The past few months, frontier AI labs were rushing to announce "no, our AI bot broke out of its sandbox and committed crime first and harder than yours".
I said to so friends back then: if I posted about how I ran GLM 5.2 or whatever I was running then in some shoddily built sandbox and it escaped and accidentally hacked some US company, I'd probably already have been extradited to the US and be awaiting sentencing. But when a hyperscaler does it, they just get inflated stock prices.
- peter422 13d agoFWIW I don't think this is true. Intention matter a lot in US law. If you could prove the AI did something bad entirely on its own and you had nothing to do with it and had no reasonable belief it was possible, I think you'd be alright. People are not charged with hacking when their unsecured box is taken over by a botnet and does bad stuff.
- zx8080 13d agoIntention of the AI?
- rcxdude 13d agoIntent of the user.
- mirekrusin 13d agoJust say you wanted to make world better for humanity, you should be fine.
- rcxdude 13d agoFunnily enough the legal system has dealt with people lying about their intentions before.
- mirekrusin 12d agoOpenAI is in trouble then, no?
- rcxdude 11d agoIf there's evidence they deliberately did this, yes. If they've lied in other cases then it might make their testimony that they didn't intend this less credible, but also OpenAI as a whole is not going to face criminal charges, so it'll also depend on the situation of whatever individuals do get charged, if it does go to court.
- chrismorgan 13d ago> and had no reasonable belief it was possible The broad concept has been well-known for half a century at least, and the very specific concept for several years at least. It’s clear that they didn’t take reasonable precautions against it. And it’s not even the first time this sort of thing has happened, though it’s higher-profile and -impact than before.
- trvz 13d agoIndeed, and because of that, I argue it's not just the crime of hacking, but crimes against humanity, due to endangering the existence of the species.
- bbor 13d agoThe concept of… hacking? And yes this is absolutely the first time autonomous software has breached containment. What are you referring to? Perhaps just corporate cyber in general?
- Sharlin 13d agoThe concept of AI breaking out of a box or doing something unintended trying to achieve a goal. OpenAI should be found guilty of gross negligence of some sort, because this was not something that could not have been anticipated, and because their security precautions were laughable. Because the AI itself is not a legal person, it must be OpenAI that's responsible for what it does.
- shwaj 13d agoNeuromancer came out in 1984, over 40 years ago, so that covers the broad concept. Or Neo in The Matrix: “Programs hacking programs… why?” For non-fiction you could look at Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014). More recently, see Cade Metz’s NYT profile of Geoffrey Hinton, “The Godfather of A.I. Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead” (May 1, 2023).
- easterncalculus 13d ago> Intention matter a lot in US law. Maybe (and historically, not with CFAA) - but they're still going to extradite you to a trial here to find out which is more than enough to ruin your life. The government is already looking for a great excuse to criminalize open source models.
- euroderf 13d ago> The government is already looking for a great excuse to criminalize open source models. Sounds interesting+scary. Do you have some source for this ?
- alightsoul 13d agoAnthropic and Openai, but especially anthropic, are lobbying the us government to make it happen
- ALLTaken 13d agoThe government or OpenAI and Anthrophic? Because if you mean the Government, I think they frankly just care whoever is paying them to make an executive order or worse a law paid by corporations to not only block, but ideally also ANHILIATE ANY POTENTIAL COMPETITION. It's the ultimatum against the small guys. Sold as "Anti-China", when in reality it's only purpose is total dependency to corporations by law.
- solenoid0937 13d agoThe support of OSS models on HN just days after finding out about the message board incident is so bizarre to me. Do you guys really not comprehend the impact of giving every script kiddie an Astra-equivalent model to play with, this time without any guardrails whatsoever? Cause I'm starting to think you aren't really thinking through the impact of power plants, hospitals, etc all being hacked en masse. People will die. Or making it easy for anyone to make a virus (it's not hard, mechanically). Even more people will die. Taking this to the extreme: You don't just give every kid a "do anything" super intelligent button. Open source models have a limited lifespan whether you like it or not, for the safety of all of us as a whole.
- Frieren 13d ago> Intention matter a lot in US law. They hacked a competition company. The intention was implicit when there is economic gain to be had. > People are not charged with hacking when their unsecured box is taken over by a botnet and does bad stuff. Because it is a lose for that people. If the botnet left money in their pockets the situation would be totally different as there will be an incentive for them to let the botnet hack them.
- rcxdude 13d ago> The intention was implicit when there is economic gain to be had. Not how it works. Intent requires at least that you were deliberately doing the criminal act (sometimes also that you knew it was criminal, or at least that you had some reason to believe that it was wrong).
- Frieren 12d ago> Intent requires at least that you were deliberately doing the criminal act So, they did something that benefits them by mistake. I would like to see a person would be judged in that situation. I can imagine that the bar to put someone in prison is way lower than to give a fine to a mega-corporation.
- rcxdude 11d agoYou can imagine what you like. I can imagine a million examples of people being judged not guilty because intent could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. There are of course many injustices in the 'justice' system, but I would prefer to discuss the concrete details instead of just vibes. Here's one case: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/342/246/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/342/246/ where someone who took some metal they believed to be abandoned was aquitted on that basis, though this particular case made it to the supreme court because the lower courts tried to rule that the fact that he didn't intend to steal them didn't matter. Also, I don't think there's a strong argument that hacking huggingface did benefit them. If you could prove it was a deliberate ploy to market their models, then perhaps you could argue they expected to benefit. Otherwise, you could argue that it's negatively affected their reputation.
- muddi900 13d agoIntention matters in the severity of charges and sentencing. Crime due to ignorance or negligence is still a crime.
- TJSomething 13d agoIt seems to me that the law in the US is set up to only establish standards of negligence after a bunch of people die.
- mikeyouse 13d agoNot remotely true. Mens rea is a necessary precondition to establish criminal culpability for tons of crimes. Well before sentencing is ever considered. The far opposite, ‘strict liability’, where you’re guilty of a crime purely due to some action or inaction (the actus reus) is exceedingly rare in the US justice system. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea
- hn_throwaway_99 13d agoBaloney, lots of people go to jail for DUIs, and that's the right analogy here. People don't drink and drive with the intention to kill people. They drink because it's fun and then get behind the wheel because it's easy and convenient, even though they know the dangers they convince themselves nothing that bad will happen. AI companies are creating these dangerous, powerful models (that they keep telling us are dangerous and powerful), then they take off all the safety guards to run them in woefully inadequate "sandboxes". Pure negligence.
- jdm2212 13d agoDrunk driving is an actus reus offense basically everywhere, so it's not analogous at all.
- hn_throwaway_99 12d agoIt's certainly analogous to the behavior exhibited by these AI companies in deliberately performing dangerous actions and then letting other innocent people deal with the consequences.
- asveikau 13d agoBut US law also has a concept of negligence. If you set up an AI to do this and didn't take reasonable steps to prevent it you could still be on the hook.
- RobotToaster 13d agoAt the very least it would be reckless.
- lelanthran 13d agoIntention (mens rea) is not a get out of jail free card, it just changes the nature of the crime and charges you get convicted off. If you run someone over on purpose you get convicted of murder. If You do it by driving recklessly you get convicted of culpable homicide. The only time you get off with nothing is if it is determined to be an accident. As they always say: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Running a dangerous machine prevents you from claiming you had no idea the machine was dangerous.
- mafuy 13d agoEspecially if they kept telling us how dangerous the machine is.
- AngryData 13d agoWell that and you spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers to reinforce that point and make the prosecution rethink whether they will profit off of this case or not. US law doesn't really give much of a crap about your intentions unless you can back it up with a wall of money to exclude yourself from the rules of the general population.
- KaiserPro 12d agoTHere is intention ie, I intended to steal money from you. Under common law stealing is "taking with intent to deprive". How thats determined is a bit harder. But how can someone be "grossly negligent" if they didn't intend to cause an accident? well they either allowed a situation to happen, or didn't stop a situation happening that they could see was bad. An example of this would be the igintion switch from GM that caused all those deaths. the engineer saw that it was shit, knew it didn't do what it was supposed to do, and half arsed the replacement to the point where it wasn't actually changed. "We are going to test the cyber capabilities of this new model. Yeah it should be fine to have a package proxy. Hmm? whats that? isn't that a security issue? naaaa those proxies are secure."
- windexh8er 12d ago> People are not charged with hacking when their unsecured box is taken over by a botnet and does bad stuff. What the Frontier labs have done is not this, however. Also, they know damn well what can happen and they still don't take the appropriate precautions. At this point it's very hard to believe it's not intentional for purposes of marketing.
- tikimcfee 13d ago> But when a hyperscaler does it, they just get inflated stock prices I also keep coming back to this, and I find it harder and harder a fact to live with. It's not a conspiracy theory, we're not crazy for pointing it out, and worse, there are people here I read about constantly what-abouting and number gaming and "well what would you have done?"ing like somehow the destruction of the concept of equal justice isn't just happening, but happening inside the bloody industry that feeds them, clothes them, gives them bonuses and retirements and the ability to even think a future, going off the grid, "retiring early from a smart exit" whatever. I am finding this community is sadly making me hate my industry specialization more and more and it's because of this. My magic wand would be waving it at those humans to force them to suddenly and powerfully experience their version of an overview effect in their lives so they would simply STOP working for FAANGYWANGY companies and just say, honestly and humbly and painfully: "I am contributing to the downfall of society by complicity feeding a malicious herd of whales." I gave up a number of big jobs and stocks and money because the people I met were wretched. I am a massively imperfect person, but by all that I can, I refuse to build the torment nexus. I have met too many people that want to work for the company that does, and those people put these hyperscalers, as you call them, into positions where they can influence an entire planet of humans on a whim. I literally dream of a world sometimes where Elon wakes up and finds out no one takes his call, no one reads his tweets, no one even hands him a cup of coffee at a shop. I imagine this for a lot of people in the world. That sounds like a world trying to rid itself of parasites and evolve toward a brighter future. I want to be in it. Anyway. Science and stuff I guess.
- walrus01 13d ago> I'd probably already have been extradited to the US and be awaiting sentencing. Bold of you to assume it wouldn't be a direct ticket to the new gulag in El Salvador.
- bbor 13d agoI think they forgot about that, thank god. All the innocent citizens we sent there are still being tortured daily, but that somehow lost their interest. God forbid they remember before the midterms and ruin more lives for a stunt… That said I just recently saw a story of a Latin American man sent to the Central African Republic, which has gotta be one of the most absurd & dangerous places to send someone. Less opportunities for them to stage photo shoots with that strategy, tho.
- walrus01 13d agoThey're literally even deporting Afghans who supported the US, who are in danger of being tortured and killed by the Taliban if returned to Afghanistan, to the Central African Republic: https://www.google.com/search?&q=afghans+deported+to+africa https://www.google.com/search?&q=afghans+deported+to+africa
- whimsicalism 13d ago[dead]
- naishoya 13d agoBrian José Morales García: A 25-year-old U.S. citizen born in Denver, Colorado, was wrongfully deported to Mexico following a traffic stop in Texas, despite possessing a birth certificate and other identifying documents. His legal team filed a case in federal court to secure his return. https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/us-citizen-wrongfully-deported-mexico-settles-his-case-against-federal-government https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/us-citizen-wrong... https://deportation-research.buffett.northwestern.edu/us-citizens/ https://deportation-research.buffett.northwestern.edu/us-cit... Individuals Detained and Deported Lorenzo Palma Roberto Dominquez Andres Robles Esteban Tiznado Mark Lyttle Jhon Ocampo So - if the argument hinges on an insistance of 'El Salvador' as a destination of malicious intent, probably no. But if being illegally deported while being a US citizen and put through strenuous and harmful conditions in the process fits the request; there are several who have first hand experience with being brown and American in the extreme. And it's not their first rodeo: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deport-us-citizens/ https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deport-u...
- bbor 13d agoI promise you, they are not publishing these stories for marketing. They listen to the scientists, and know what’s coming. They’re just desperately trying to warn us…
- tapoxi 13d agoMaybe Aaron Swartz would still be alive if he was incorporated
- giov4 12d agojust read about it, what a sad story, thanks for the reference. looks like he did great stuff. for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz "As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS; the technical architecture for Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses; and the Python website framework web.py. Swartz helped define the syntax of the lightweight markup language format Markdown, and was a co-owner of the social news aggregation website Reddit until it was fully sold in 2006 and contributed to its development until he left the company in 2007." the most scary part is knowing this is the fear we all have, and the one they want us to have.
- matheusmoreira 12d ago> the most scary part is knowing this is the fear we all have, and the one they want us to have Yes. It's such a terrible and oppressive feeling. I wish things were different...
- apefulsin 12d agoI've heard he was more like the Elon Musk of the open source world. He didn't co-found Reddit, he was placed there by Y Combinator staff to the protests of its actual founders. Maybe some of the other projects he's credited for also were like that.
- giov4 12d agowhat is meant with "he was placed there by Y Combinator staff to the protests of its actual founders." I find it interesting, could you expand on that? or is there any reference?
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- jrockway 13d agoHuggingFace didn't seem that mad about it. Obviously some backroom dealing was done to make them not mad about it, but... that's allowed.
- solenoid0937 13d agoHuggingFace had no interest in squeezing a few million dollars out of OpenAI in the midst of being acquired by Nvidia. The optics are bad for HF as well because they gladly host abliterated models with safety training removed. When Astra/Fable level open weights models arrive, HF will soon be the cause of far worse incidents, and they know it.
- aizk 13d agoYou missed a critical detail. They couldn't defend themselves with closed source American models so they had to investigate with Chinese models that had less restrictions. Great optics for hosting open source models!
- alightsoul 13d agoRookie mistake, you should have created a company and gotten people to do it. Put everything under the company. And then the one in trouble is the company not you.
- serbuvlad 13d agoEthics aside, you can create an NGO with three people and do a lot of stuff in it's name that you can't do as a private individual or it would be a lot more expensive to do. If everyone did this, it would stop being a special ability of some people.
- xnickb 13d agoBonus points: kids need lego? Buy it without VAT. Write it off as a "client demo asset"
- pfisch 13d agoTo write something off means you need revenue to offset. Revenue that would be taxed...
- cyberax 13d agoRevenue is rarely taxed, usually only profit is. And it's easy to avoid it.
- mocamoca 12d agoThis is not how VAT usually works. As a company you collect VAT from your customers and pay VAT to your suppliers. Depending on the resulting balance, you will either give back the amount of surplus collected VAT to your country/state/whatever or you will be provided with VAT credit. VAT collection is different from a profit tax or other taxes.
- apefulsin 12d agoYes, that's how the trick works. Profit is revenue minus expenses. By increasing expenses, you decrease profit, and therefore tax. But it only works if you had a profit before, because the government doesn't pay you back tax when you lose money.
- latentsea 13d agoI always joke that if you want to commit crimes, disguise them as a legitimate business. This is apparently a thing.
- jdm2212 13d agoIf you make a serious attempt to look like you're engaged in legitimate business, people will (shockingly) be somewhat more hesitant to think you're committing a crime than if you are just openly committing crime.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- gradus_ad 12d agoThe sad reality of AI labs needing to one up each other ahead of IPO's and escaping a sandbox being the new capability frontier.
- kmoser 12d ago> But when a hyperscaler does it, they just get inflated stock prices. This reminds me of the early days of AOL when they received so much traffic that their (dial-up) lines became inaccessible. In a rational world, their stock would have suffered because their service degraded, but instead their stock rose based on the optics of increased demand.
- OoooooooO 12d agoStock prices always include the expected future profits, that's the market rates a stock
- aaron695 12d ago[dead]