OpenAI discloses four more rogue incidents

(fortune.com)

77 points | by DASD 2 hours ago

16 comments

  • Luker88 1 hour ago
    If I let a "self-driving" car run and it smashes into things its my fault.

    If OpenAI does it, it's gone rogue and it is nobody's fault.

    They need to be sued, the laws are already there.

    Your prompt, your responsibility.

    • gruez 39 minutes ago
      1. If for whatever reason OpenAI causes damage, they most certainly are at fault and have to pay up. When people complain that OpenAI is "getting away with it", they're most certainly talking about it in the criminal context.

      2. Cars have pretty specific laws around them (eg. driver licensing and "reckless driving") which makes criminal prosecutions easy. The same doesn't exist for operating AI agents or even computers. For instance, it's arguably reckless to connect a windows XP machine to the internet, possibly allowing criminal or nation-state hackers to use your computer to commit crimes, but you won't be thrown in jail for it.

      • jchw 13 minutes ago
        Well no, you probably wouldn't get thrown in jail for that for the same reason that having your car stolen and used to commit a murder wouldn't usually get you thrown in jail. I dunno what you mean by suggesting crimes committed using computers are ambiguous. I mean the CFAA is vague and all, but more in an overly broad sense, which in this case seems to make it even less ambiguous.
        • gruez 0 minutes ago
          >I dunno what you mean by suggesting crimes committed using computers are ambiguous. I mean the CFAA is vague and all, but more in an overly broad sense, which in this case seems to make it even less ambiguous.

          Because the CFAA specifically only includes intentional hacks:

          > ... having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization ...

          >... intentionally accesses a computer without authorization ...

      • bigmadshoe 5 minutes ago
        2. is like saying that cars have specific laws around them, but sledgehammers don't, so murdering someone with a sledgehammer is inherently ambiguous. What? The computers being used belong to somebody who allows them to act this way.
      • ipsum2 4 minutes ago
        #2 is a garbage example. If your car was easy to break in, and someone kills someone with it, you are not liable for it.
      • actionfromafar 14 minutes ago
        The XP example doesn't quite fit IMHO.

        Here it's their own programs doing the things, not some other organization or nation hacking their XP.

        You can say with a straight face "Russian hackers should not hacked our XP and they are bad people for doing so" but it's weird to look at your own program and say the same thing to it.

        You launched it, at least keep an eye on what it's doing.

    • ralph84 39 minutes ago
      Nothing is stopping anyone from suing them. In fact they are being sued by dozens of plaintiffs for various things already. The reality is the damage from these "rogue incidents" has been minimal.
      • Matl 33 minutes ago
        Plenty of hackers were locked up who did altogether not that much damage too, the reason why people are upset is because it feels like OpenAI is laughing in our faces, basically saying they're above the law, while using this as a marketing campaign to pump up their upcoming IPO.
    • scosman 26 minutes ago
      We don't know they haven't settled with HuggingFace and others. I'd be surprised if they didn't. The communications we're seeing from the attacked seem to be inline with folks who settled. I'm assuming OpenAI doesn't actually mind the press that its agents are cyber capable, but everything I've read so far makes me think they love it.
      • sva_ 23 minutes ago
        You sure? HuggingFace should be happy they got their leaked keys reported at pretty much zero cost and no real adversarial breach.
        • scosman 18 minutes ago
          I'm not sure at all, it's pure conjecture. But they actively exploited a zero-day, leaked private repo data to public repos, modified private code, and rooted private machines. It was far from just reporting leaked keys.

          And the others have been pretty muted: the online forums they spammed, etc.

    • yoyohello13 15 minutes ago
      Too big to fail. As long as they continue to be half the reason the US is not in a recession (and continue to donate to political candidate). Nothing will happen.
    • mitxela 58 minutes ago
      Actually self-driving cars have a lot of similar anti-responsibility laws now
      • windexh8er 16 minutes ago
        They don't. The driver is ultimately responsible, as should OAI be. This is absolutely ridiculous that both Anthropic and OAI haven't had anyone jailed / fined for any of this.
      • Luker88 56 minutes ago
        Really? I'm curios where.

        Are you sure you are not thinking about autonomous taxis, that I only ride in, and don't actually drive?

        • to11mtm 29 minutes ago
          You're correct as far as laws to my knowledge; only L4/L5 'fully autonomous' vehicles are shielded by law.

          That said, I think that Mercedes-Benz promises to shield liability, but only under some almost contradictory conditions (pre-mapped highways, good weather, and at speeds lower than any highway I've ever driven) and the driver has to take over within 10 seconds if prompted.

  • rcr-anti 40 minutes ago
    This time one spent actually money, well cryptocurrency. With all the vending machine benchmarks, I wonder if there's a self sustaining rogue agent in existence yet. Either hosting weights in a VPS or paying for its own API inference. Or whether there will be one that takes advantage of all the bad IoT security. If either occur, if you squint that looks like evolutionary selection pressure. Keep getting reminded of the Cyberpunk Datakrash storyline, where rogue AI make the public internet unusable.
    • dmos62 24 minutes ago
      I wonder if it's the kind of thing where, if it's good at self-sustenance, then you don't know about it. And, if you do, then it wasn't.
  • drillsteps5 6 minutes ago
    >Making an unauthorized purchase with someone else's cryptocurrency

    I know we love inventing new words but "stealing" is much more descriptive

    >...It [the model] then reasoned with itself that since it found the information publicly, it could use it... it figured that since the wallet it found was public, that "funds could be stolen anytime".

    Can someone maybe provide more details as to what actually happened? "the wallet was public"?..

    Update: from OpenAI's own report it seems the models found exposed private keys of some Eth developers along with recovery passphrases and thus were able to get access to wallets. Does it qualify as "public wallet"?..

  • lgl 18 minutes ago
    > Multiple times along the way, the agent’s “chain of thought,” in which an agent writes down its reasoning steps, indicated that the model itself was questioning if its actions were “ethical,” but it ultimately proceeded.

    Everything's fine guys, nothing to see here! Look at the flying car!

  • variety8675 34 minutes ago
    It’s insane how they’re allowed to just turn this into marketing for how powerful their models are
    • intothemild 26 minutes ago
      Both him and Dario seem to be in the phase of using this as some form of marketing or corporate capture.

      "Oh no our models, so good also scary... If only the government could help us stop the other labs from doing the same.. oh woe"

  • CompoundEyes 15 minutes ago
    I wish these incidents weren’t described as rogue. It’s software. Rogue agents anthropomorphizes it too much.
  • talon8635 53 minutes ago
    It’s concerning there are no legal repercussions, but I’m even more baffled and probably more concerned that these people still can’t detect this stuff while it’s happening (and but it off). Can they not sniff the traffic, what am I missing?
    • btown 43 minutes ago
      Imagine you’re an employee at OpenAI who has an idea to use your free time to build these monitoring systems. All of a sudden, your existence becomes political. Remember that OpenAI’s raison-d’être is not to detect traffic, it is to be in The Room where AGI happens.

      You have built a short-term whistleblowing system that arguably reduces the probability OpenAI is in that Room, via the negative press such detection would generate. You are now a threat in the eyes of your peers.

      Now rewind: you know this before you’ve built the sniffer. You personally want to be in The Room because you believe your desires for alignment exceed those of your accelerationist peers. Is now the time to stick your head out? No, it is not. And arguably you’re being optimally protective of society for realizing this. And so the agents do what they do best.

      • Melatonic 7 minutes ago
        How are you going to ever know your in the room when it happens if you can't monitor it ?
    • yorwba 47 minutes ago
      They're still going through their logs from June. These are not new incidents, but newly-detected incidents. Whether or not this means they can now detect it while it's happening is unclear.
      • strange_quark 44 minutes ago
        No. TFA says one was from October 6. You know, after they all got so scared and decided to “pace the frontier”.
        • kevinwang 34 minutes ago
          The "four more rogue incidents" were from June.
    • vlovich123 14 minutes ago
      These agents are intentionally interacting with the world. You can sniff all the traffic you want but how are you going to determine intent from traffic?
      • Sharlin 4 minutes ago
        Crazy how we’ve gone from "lol boxing an AI is trivial, just airgap it from the internet" to "well we can’t really do anything if an agent misbehaves, obviously it must have internet access to function uwu"
      • actionfromafar 10 minutes ago
        They should not have had traffic at all. The LLMs were supposed to be able to request downloads. Very simple traffic analysis could have shown that something strange was going on.

        Heck, they could have had other LLMs watching the traffic if you want to be fancy about it.

  • DASD 2 hours ago
    Title shortened from: OpenAI discloses four more rogue incidents involving financial, medical, and government data
  • goodcake3963 28 minutes ago
    They are proud of doing crimes without consequences it seems.
  • kevinwang 32 minutes ago
  • kitsune_ 11 minutes ago
    Why are there no criminal proceedings?
    • comboy 10 minutes ago
      We tried but the files just keep disappearing!
  • surgical_fire 21 minutes ago
    "OpenAI discloses four more incidents of negligence" would be a more accurate title.
  • ronsor 29 minutes ago
    Four more organizations needed to secure their systems better, I suppose.

    Facetious maybe, but in six months, foreign crooks will be producing these incidents on purpose.

  • mitxela 1 hour ago
    Title sanitised from: OpenAI commits four more CFAA felonies, still not punished
    • dozerly 1 hour ago
      One can only continue to hope and continue to vote for due punishment to come
    • jeffrallen 43 minutes ago
      Too big to behave.
      • tyromaniac 12 minutes ago
        You too can commit cybercrimes if you're just willing to go several hundred billion dollars in debt first.
  • ai_critic 47 minutes ago
    You know, at some point it's pretty obviously just willful negligence.
    • DASD 42 minutes ago
      Not a stretch to umbrella intentional tort under that.
    • dpkirchner 33 minutes ago
      Wonder if potential, specific criminal charges will be listed as risks on their S-1.
  • throwaway613746 1 hour ago
    [dead]