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Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

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Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#41

Post by illliillll »

Lawbreaking is almost never prosecuted, so you’ll have to explicitly explain the reasoning behind your question.

Far less than 1% of all crime which happens is prosecuted, why should OpenAI be prosecuted?

Since the necessary context isn’t provided, this just seems like an utterly stupid question. The obvious answer is “OpenAI probably isn’t being prosecuted because crimes are almost never prosecuted”.

It’s like asking why I don’t get arrested every time I get stopped shitfaced drunk at the La Turbie police checkpoint. The answer is obvious: The cops are looking for brown people, there are no taxis here and after 2am everyone driving in the vicinity of Monaco will be drunk. i.e. nobody gives a shit

Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#42

Post by illliillll »

arm32 wrote: post #25
elp wrote: post #5

They aren't getting prosecuted because everyone involved has made nice and turned it into a marketing exercise. I heard about it on the radio (local Johannesburg radio station) before I saw it on HN. The economist had a full article up about it before the end of the day, and in the evening Sky news had talking heads up chatting about what it all meant while clearly being clueless. Someone spent a LOT of money to turn…

I remember when everyone involved with AaronSW's JSTOR downloading made nice and turned it into a fun time, until a certain two government officials decided that doesn't matter. OpenAI could be considered a legal actor under the CFAA, notably: unauth'd acc. §1030(a)(2), fraud §1030(a)(4), (kind of a stretch but) damage §1030(a)(5), and conspiracy. I miss ya, Aaron.

Aaron was offered two plea deals, one that carried 4 months and another with 6 months but a chance to plead with the judge for a lesser, perhaps entirely noncustodial sentence.

It’s a particularly poor example of government cruelty.

Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#43

Post by mejutoco »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #7
elp wrote: post #5

They aren't getting prosecuted because everyone involved has made nice and turned it into a marketing exercise. I heard about it on the radio (local Johannesburg radio station) before I saw it on HN. The economist had a full article up about it before the end of the day, and in the evening Sky news had talking heads up chatting about what it all meant while clearly being clueless. Someone spent a LOT of money to turn…

PR exercise or not, there was a successful hacking attempt, the company behind it acknowledged it. It's a crystal clear case for OFAC, the French cyber-security branch of the National Police. I guess FBI would happily move such a simple case through the court system as well.

> PR exercise or not, there was a successful hacking attempt, the company behind it acknowledged it.

Do you think GPT-2 is too dangerous to release?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48465269

Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#44

Post by ChildOfChaos »

HuggingFace would lose a lot of there business if Model makers feared if something went wrong they would be sued, nobody would give them models anymore.

Sometimes better to work with people when things go wrong via good intentions rather than turn around and sue them and break relationships completely.

Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#45

Post by Topfi »

mejutoco wrote: post #43
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PR exercise or not, there was a successful hacking attempt, the company behind it acknowledged it. It's a crystal clear case for OFAC, the French cyber-security branch of the National Police. I guess FBI would happily move such a simple case through the court system as well.

> PR exercise or not, there was a successful hacking attempt, the company behind it acknowledged it. Do you think GPT-2 is too dangerous to release? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48465269

Every time the GPT-2 concerns are brought up I have to ask myself whether the people that try to abuse that as a knockout argument truly believe that the concerns regarding misinformation en masse haven’t taken hold or whether they simply haven’t read past the headline.

The concerns were correct, they did bear out as predicted and we are all paying for it.

Re: Ask HN: If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?

#46

Post by Topfi »

boveyking wrote: post #36

There is a legal gap. The main law people look at is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), plus state computer-crime laws, contract terms, and general civil claims. However, LLM active attacks do not always fit neatly into existing hacking laws, because the system may be accessed through normal text prompts rather than by breaking into a classic computer boundary. That is why legal commentators say the U.S. still…

> However, LLM active attacks do not always fit neatly into existing hacking laws, because the system may be accessed through normal text prompts rather than by breaking into a classic computer boundary.

Honest question, I was unable to find what you are referring to, what is that grounded in and can I just put a open weight LLM in between any malicious code I’d like to attack others with and be in the legal clear in the States?

LLMs don’t do anything without an initial prompt, OpenAI should be better than anyone else at monitoring what their models do and the responsibility for e.g. driver assistance still lies with the human outside specific exemptions for which law had to be drafted and which come up additional obligations.

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