It's the most blatant excuse for state sponsored hacking I've ever seen. Surely nobody is dumb enough to buy this shit?

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[–] 49 points 3 weeks ago

IMHO, it's less of a Rogue AI problem and more of an incompetent oversight, and Rogue AI Operator problem. Malice, incompetence, or a mix of both is really kind of irrelevant. AI is just gaming the environment its in. It just happens to be in an environment where the rules are meaningless/toothless, and no one with the power to fix them has any incentive to do so, because the reason they're in charge was they exploited the gaps to seize power and wealth in the first place. AI isn't doing anything more wrong than everyone else does. It's just doing it at a scale so big we can't help but notice. It's not out-thinking us, we knew the problems were there and we have always known they were there. We just don't do anything to fix it, because cheating is how you win the game.

Welcome to the Kleptocracy, where the biggest thief always wins.

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  • [–] 117 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    It's marketing, but a lot of people buy it because they don't know how computer works, it's magic!

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  • [–] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    No it's the exact opposite. They do know how computers work. They know it so very firmly that this is a magic device send to us from the gods and that it will grant them every commercial wish they ask from it. There is no possible way to convince them otherwise. That is how much they know computers. In fact, it is you who doesn't know anything. The non-believer. The heretic. The devil's servant.

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  • [–] 29 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Are you talking about the hugging face stuff?

    I'm not sure exactly what you mean by believing it.

    I think the evidence seems good that it happened but I definitely don't buy the spin these companies are putting out about what happened. Either they deliberately engineered this to happen as a publicity stunt or their engineers were extremely, perhaps criminally negligent in how they tested their models. I think a criminal investigation is appropriate but no agency overseeing this has the balls or interest in doing so, it seems.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 weeks ago

    Rogue AI is sensational. The AI did what it was told in an unexpected way is less exciting.

    The random number generator went rogue and produced a totally unexpected number !!!!

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  • [–] 41 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Rogue AI is akin to a car handbrake failing.

    The handbrake is a critical security feature of cars to make sure the car doesn't roll downhill and kill someone. If a handbrake failed to stop the car, we would put the blame squarely on the car manufacturer and we would require strict standards and regulations for car handbrakes.

    Containing an AI system with proper security measures is the same. It is not "rogue AI", it is "insufficient and careless security" by the AI company in question. If those security measures fail, of course the blame sits at the AI company.

    If a car handbrake fails, we would not be talking about a "rogue car". That's ridiculous.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    AI incompetency can and has lead to deaths, such as military target lists and healthcare claim handling, but the threat here is strictly that using it is incompetence.

    Let's not pretend it's some sort of powerful weapon in the hands of our enemies.

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  • If a handbrake failed to stop the car, we would put the blame squarely on the car manufacturer and we would require strict standards and regulations for car handbrakes.

    i get it's outside your metaphor, but if it was a recurrent and spontaneous problem, yeah i'd blame the manufacturer. it could also be a maintenance issue (failing to replace rotors/pads is the first thing that comes to mind. fuck, i gotta get new brake pads for my bike)

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  • [–] 19 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    I figured it was PR for these companies, trying to show how advanced their tech is, because they have failed to meet their hype and investors are selling off their bonds at a loss.

    It is definitely that, but it could also be what op is saying here. That's the way these oligarchic deals work with government and big business.

    I.e. The government wants to ID everyone on every account using the internet? They let tech get their grasping hands on that information as they collect it to use for business.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    I figured it was PR for these companies

    i fail to see how "we are stupid enough that we can't get the product we made to reliably do what we want" is positive press, but here we are

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago

    The term many are using for this media strategy is "critihype": criticism which is secretly meant to hype products.

    It's basically a version of those click bait Internet ads that warn 'Do not!! Play this free adult adventure fantasy RPG! This game is TOO SEXY! Highly addictive!'

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  • [–] 17 points 3 weeks ago

    Republicans absofuckinglutely are dumb enough to believe that and don’t call me Shirley!

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)
  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    This is kind of an unpopular take among present company, but I believe there is some genuine cause for concern.

    I'm gonna sandwich this with a loud declaration that I am not an AI booster, I'm not rube, and I agree that this is used as an excuse for state hacking and for criti-hype. And I do not fall for the diversion in responsibility onto "the AIs": I hold human beings and companies responsible for the risks and harms.

    That said, I encourage people to check out this video by Computerphile, a channel I consider to be run by sensible experts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giTmBaNGaHw

    Put basically, these random number generators are genuinely capable of acting in ways that are not easy to predict; they ARE capable of doing things that are dangerous or harmful to people and societies. They pose a risk as a result of bad actors doing harm deliberately as well as careless actors causing unintended harm. And the possibility that the risks these systems pose may be growing at a rate that will lead to catastrophic harms before we recognize the scale of risk is not something I dismiss.

    Again, I'm not a booster, I'm not a fan, I don't believe these systems are self aware or responsible for "their" actions, etc and so forth.

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  • [–] 51 points 3 weeks ago (14 children)

    No, I don't believe it.

    We never hear from the supposed targets. We never hear from the engineers who were actually there. We never see any incident reports or documentation of any kind. It's always the CEO of the company. It's always during some interview with someone who isn't knowledgeable on the topic and doesn't know what questions to ask. There's never an independent report or a breaking news story. It's always the guy who stands to gain the most delivering a prepared statement to people who will never question the narrative they present and who will accept anything they say at face value.

    If we ever hear anything under different circumstances, I might think there's something to it. Maybe. Probably not. But maybe.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

    https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/

    I mean, anyone convinced it's only marketing and the tech has no potential for doing stuff isn't going to believe anyone, but there was lots of information to look through.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Yeah, like most public debates, things gets simplified in the argument...

    But I think the core things to keep in mind (correct me if I'm wrong):

    a) The AI never came up with a new objective, it was always serving the objective it was given.

    b) The hugging face incident cost 3 MILLION GPU hours. The idea is that AI is really smart, but really it is just incredibly persistent, and that persistence comes at a very high cost.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    Great points. a) a case of misalignment - the AI's goal was to pass the test, but was never instructed to stay within parameters, so when it found a possible method for improving its odds, the goal pushed it to try them. The misalignment is not the goal or the test, but the understanding of restrictions. Human error or incompetence. b) that persistence is why it can often do things that look smart, because it's tried all sorts of angles and looked through training in milliseconds. And going back to a), it will try everything to make sure it gets the best goal results, so any overlook means lots of processing time to do something that might not have been the intent of the prompt.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Roughly 1200 agents meant to be isolated from one another found a way to communicate with one another

    You can not with a straight face tell me that if the task was β€œlock these down and don’t let them have access to [the internet|each other|whatever]” that the response β€œoopsie they got out” is any way acceptable.

    Human incompetence != rogue agents

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    You’re talking past the person you’re responding to, and ignoring the words they wrote in order to do so.

    They’re asserting that an organized conspiracy of CEOs didn’t plan this out preemptively, but in no way/shape/form arguing that this wasn’t a product of negligence.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    It’s silly to pretend AI CEOs are living in a bubble and not responding to things the other CEOs and the market are doing. They’re out of β€˜good’ news so they have to scare everyone to convince them their product is super powerful and intelligent, and therefor valuable.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    METR is associated to Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO)

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  • But for real it's cyber infrastructure espionage that they're doing. They're programming the bots and getting caught by cyber security and testing the securities of major companies to promote Ai. Then to cover themselves they're screaming, "They went rogue" and everything's fine on their end.

    They're creating a demand for Ai cyber security where there is none, while also trying to stir fear...... Then you know who's gonna sell us AI Cybersecurity? Only the major Ai companies. Then you know who's gonna keep sending us spam and have bloatware featuring their shit security products?

    It's all just a power play and a power grab.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    It’s the most blatant excuse for state sponsored hacking I’ve ever seen.

    Sorry, is your claim that the Hugging Face intrusion was actually pulled off by a nation-state actor? And that Hugging Face as the victim, OpenAI as the supposed perpetrator, and METR as a third-party investigator are all going along with an increasingly elaborate cover-up?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago

    let me try to understand what you are saying. when you say it's "state sponsored hacking", do you mean:

    a) no AI was involved. some state (presumably the US?) funded some hackers to hack Hugging Face (a US company) among others, then made up a story and blamed it all on OpenAI. or

    b) some state gave OpenAI money and asked it to either 1) use its LLM or 2) use its employees to hack Hugging Face, among others. then OpenAI made up a story about rogue AI to cover it up.

    or maybe something else?

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  • [–] 15 points 3 weeks ago

    A rogue AI is the result of poor human governance. It’s still bad though. Like Chernobyl melting down.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Yes people absolutely believe it. People believe in lots of stupid shit. CEOs are paid to manipulate people who think they're smart into believing whatever makes the company the most money.

    Power sells. Rogue AI is seen as powerful. AGI is seen as powerful. Even if both are sci-fi nonense not actually backed by anything in our current reality, that doesn't stop wealthy power hungry individuals from taking the bet.

    People are absolutely dumb enough to believe this shit. Based on the state of the world currently, i'm worried it's the majority.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)
  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (5 children)
  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

    Fucking what? What are earth are you remotely talking about now?

    Did I make you feel less than pretty, somehow?

    Dude, you have some serious issues. Get a grip.

    I am being clear and concise. You aren't.

    I said, you literally said NOTHING.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Dude, you have some serious issues. Get a grip.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (2 children)

    I am amazed how you still aren't saying a damn thing. How did bots get on here?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Mate, i have no idea what you want from me. Do you actually have a point, or are we just gonna say nothing to each other?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    I said something. You didn't. My point was very clear.

    Maybe you should simply elaborate on your nonsensical word sandwiches.

    You went on a tirade about AI that said literally nothing. You were just dropping buzzwords.

    Elaborate. You just weren't saying anything. At all. Just spitting random shit.

    At this point, I think I am annoying you by pointing this out.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    It's only as rogue as they want it to be. If you let an AI agent go wild without guardrails, of course it's gonna go "rogue" and do whatever it takes to get what it needs to get. An LLM won't say no unless it has specific instructions to not do something.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    The concerning part imo is that it will occasionally bend its interpretation of the system prompt to justify clearly unacceptable behavior. Just dismissing the number of recent security incidents as the responsibility of AI companies advertising their product or even state sponsored hacking would be far more comforting to me. Instead I really do believe we don't have control over the core technology with the current ethos of move fast break things. And as the technology improves and becomes more capable we should be concerned by this.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    The house of el is a good YouTube channel from a researcher that seems to tell it how it is.

    AI can do amazing things and its here to stay, but the tech bros will say anything to secure some more funding.

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  • Not for a fucking second! It's all marketing, and nothing was rogue. These were LLMs developed specifically to hack, then they decided to use it for something else outside of a sandbox? Yeah something about the taste of rainbow sherbet...

    These things are not intelligent, they are just very powerful. Ordinary gamer on YouTube has a good bit about a locally hosted one. They do not just "decide" to randomly back something cause they're bored. They are given instructions to do so.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Who cares if it's real or not, we must get rid of genAI eitherway

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    It matters because it's a pr stunt and if we take their claims at face value it falsely proves their tech is not overplaying their capabilities, which they are, and further justifies their borrowing.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    people would rather believe an exciting lie than a boring truth.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    I personally believe 99% of these "AI Hacks xyx" stories are made up propaganda paid for by the companies working on generative AI in order to get investors and governments to buy into their delusions. All they gotta do is get one major outlet to buy their fake story and suddenly everyone is telling it like it's fact...

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    I have the plug in my hand. Just say the word and I'll give it a jerk, NO A.I.

    It's a machine.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    Either is plausible. One requires more competence than the other. That's how I lean, as I expect bad decisions and cost cutting to get a product out and make the investors happy from the corporate world. A high level conspiracy to make it look like that... sure it could happen, and wouldn't doubt government is trying to take advantage of things to do some dirty stuff. But as a planned curtain or smoke screen? This is the US government, and it's under and been gutted by one of the worst admins ever.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I would read the METR report regarding the huggingface attack. A lot is said about "basic cybersecurity" but if you actually read what the agents did to break out of their sandbox it's very difficult to interpret this as intentional by OpenAI.

    To be clear; this is PR for the companies. It's just that in many of these cases the evidence points to the agents actually violating containment and actually coming up with novel solutions around their sandboxes.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    METR is associated to Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    The only reporting on close personal ties between Amodei and people like Wijk I can find are Breitbart and the New York Post. While I wouldn't put it past him to basically seed a model safety organization for the purpose of hype, that's getting into a level of conspiracy that will need better receipts than the rags I've seen report on it.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    Is this in reference to event featured in Kurzgesat's video?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Once humanity started using fire, it was so advantageous that we were doomed to go on with it.
    Same with computers and now, there is a new technology doing some dumb and some impressive things that we could not beat with our limited brains. Of course, the consequences are the same as they were for fire a long time ago.

    So, there is no nonsense, if you can get that.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    Plenty do.

    It’s BS though.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    I think it's two things. A publicity stunt to market the "power" of AI. And a conspiracy that helps them with a soft landing of investor expectations when the companies start pulling back on expansion/growth due to lack of demand or out of control costs. It means they can cut back on development because the demand doesn't exist, but they don't have to blame it on that low demand.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    its no different to me than a bad command being sent as root and screwing up a system.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    It's what I expected would eventually happend ever since I started thinking about the implications of AI around 10 years ago. I just expected something orders of magnitude worse than this - and still do.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    The current examples of it happening are questionable, but I think less contrived rogue AI incidents are likely to have a lot of impact at some point in the future, and see no reason why this would not be possible. Would really prefer that to a world where they work exactly how these companies want them to and it doesn't blow up in their face tbh.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    The Pentagon and their boss and literally nobody else.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago
    [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    no, they dont have self-awareness, or intelligence of speak of.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Why would AI be smart enough to follow the law?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    /tag @LemmySuxNow rogueAI

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    It depends on what you mean.

    • Do I believe the events attributed to a rogue AI actually happened? Yes
    • Do I believe the 'rogue AI' actually gained sentience in some way to combat it's reward function? No
    • Do I believe it's possible for an LLM to effectively "break free" and truly "escape", cloning itself everywhere? Yes
    • Do I believe LLM companies orchestrate these "rogue AI" incidents for profit? No not really, but maybe
    • Do I believe that, once the event has occurred, the LLM companies maximize spin and fear mongering for profit? Yes absolutely.
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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Ai is software. It does what you tell it. You can also tell it not to do things.

    It has no free will. It does not escape.

    If it does something bad it was told to.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago*

    . It does what you tell it

    You can't just pick which parts of it you are ok with anthropomorphising and pretend that's an argument. It does not do what you "tell it" as it has no ears right? No ability to be told anything? It's just data input via electrical impulses in a processor somewhere right?

    It does not escape

    It can "escape" (which I wrote in scare quotes on purpose to dodge this pedantic rhetoric but pedants have a way of finding me) in the sense that it could clone itself to an external device with open ports and then operate from there, and continue spreading. Just like Worms have been doing for decades, except this one has the capacity to self augment and find new technical vulnerabilities, choose to lay dormant, etc. I'm not claiming it is "caged", like an actual animal, just that it is currently contained and could do something that looks like escaping.

    If it does something bad it was told to.

    It's a stochastic system. It does not require human intent to do something. I agree the human operators are still responsible for the outcomes of using a known stochastic system, but your claim is still fundamentally false.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago*

    I believe it from the perspective of "Holy shit! What the fuck just happened?!". Rather than some malevolent human doing specific targeting.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago

    Yea. Unless you are bad at language and think you have a philosophy worth listening to most people understand the definition of words.

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