Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

iowaattorneygeneral.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#61

Post by colechristensen »

bluGill wrote: post #44
colechristensen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WHY has no one been charged??? I doubt huggingface wants charges filed.

A crime was committed, if there is enough evidence then the state is required to prosecute and the victim has not choice in this. The victim can say they don't care and that will often hold weight for the prosecution, but that is the government's choice not the victims. The victim sometimes file a civil lawsuit against the criminal, that is their choice. That is not a criminal matter though and different rules apply.…

The "victim" doesn't have the final choice but their position is heavily influential and prosecutors don't decide if a crime was committed, that only happens at the end of the judicial proceedings. Calm down.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#62

Post by AbsurdCensor »

bix6 wrote: post #23
jstanley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because nobody did it on purpose?

Nobody stole from humanity, constantly told us how dangerous the invention was, and then set up systems that they couldn’t properly control to rush ahead of their competitors? Nobody did that on purpose? I think they did.

You could say that same exact thing for the entire Industrial Revolution, but that doesn't mean we are going to destroy the looms even though some tried unsuccessfully.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#63

Post by romanows »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #47
_verandaguy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a logical extension of the workplace rule of "you own what your bot writes;" it's hypocritical not to hold corporations to the same standards as individuals (I say, with terminal naiveness)

> you own what your bot writes Kinda weird that this is everyone's attitude while the copyright lawyers are saying the opposite. Total liability without any actual ownership.

"own" in the sense of "be responsible for the consequences". Not in the sense of "be able to grant reproduction rights".

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#64

Post by solenoid0937 »

reddozen wrote: post #48
solenoid0937 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are going to start punishing companies for security negligence, there are WAY worse cases than these models breaking out that have nothing to do with AI. This is bikeshedding at its best. Also people would just stop disclosing bad things. You already see this in the airline industry where pilots don't report mental illness because of the retributive nature of the punishment.

> there are WAY worse cases than these models breaking out that have nothing to do with AI. And? Welcome to the big boy world. This isn't playground rules where you can complain "But Bobby was doing bad things too why isn't he in trouble?" But you know this already. You're just pretending not to. Why?

Addressed in my other replies

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#65

Post by bluGill »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #7

Iowa asks? Why don't they just open a criminal investigation related to the hacking of HuggingFace?

They are opening that. This is the first step: figure out what crimes were committed by who. As I said a couple weeks ago when this broke, it looks like a crime was committed and I hope someone is charged. However we can't just charge everybody who works for openAI with the crime of speeding (even though it is probably true) - that is both the wrong crime, and also is highly unlikely everybody at openAI was involved.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#66

Post by daveguy »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #47
_verandaguy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a logical extension of the workplace rule of "you own what your bot writes;" it's hypocritical not to hold corporations to the same standards as individuals (I say, with terminal naiveness)

> you own what your bot writes Kinda weird that this is everyone's attitude while the copyright lawyers are saying the opposite. Total liability without any actual ownership.

GP's phrasing was not precise, but I think most people understood it was liability ownership and not copyright. Ownership with respect to copyright and ownership with respect to legal liability are two completely different concepts.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#67

Post by solenoid0937 »

kdheiwns wrote: post #54
solenoid0937 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like there are many people going at 120 MPH in a 50 MPH zone, that have ran over real people, but you punish the guy that self-reported doing 60 MPH because he drives a shiny, interesting Lamborghini and not a Prius like the others. Anyone outraged about these AI incidents is not thinking rationally if they were not much more outraged about everyday companies leaking millions of people's PII, SSNs, which ha…

Turning oneself in doesn't absolve one of a crime. Never did and never will. Shouldn't, either. And companies always try to pretend someone out there is worse and garner fake sympathy. OpenAI blew up the memory market and made tech inaccessible. The downstream effects of that are immeasurably massive and will have real consequences. It could even result in medical devices becoming too expensive for people. I don't ca…

> OpenAI blew up the memory market and made tech inaccessible

This is not a "crime", has nothing to do with this incident, and simply confirms what I am saying about people using these events as an outlet for their anger at AI companies, as opposed to any rational reasoning about industrywide security negligence.

I could almost respect a viewpoint that says "we should punish companies for security negligence, starting with the negligence that has caused the most egregious harms." That is an internally consistent and rational viewpoint.

I cannot respect a viewpoint that's "I don't like the AI companies, so let me use this hammer I found on them specifically." It's purely emotional.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#68

Post by bluGill »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #5

Glad the statement was published but sadly nothing will come of it other than a brief formal statement from OpenAI acknowledging safety protocols were lacking, apologizing for the incident, and promises that new safeguards are now in place that will prevent such event from occurring in the future. The threat of semi-autonomous AI threat actors will never go away until the financial incentive that buoys unchecked grow…

Set yourself an alarm for 5 years from now to review. Investigations take time. Often by the time charges are made everybody has forgotten about the incident. It only takes a few times where things go away without charges to leave an incorrect impression that nothing ever happens.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#69

Post by DannyBee »

segmondy wrote: post #60
DannyBee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyer here: This part does not require a new law. Even though agents are not agents in the principal/agent legal sense (because agents have to be human), for the purposes of criminality, it does not matter. Agents do not act autonomously (and every court to ever consider it has agreed), and therefore they would simply be considered an instrumentality of the crime. So that part does not need a new law. The real block…

"Without whatever intent the crime requires, they haven't committed a crime." I'm not a lawyer, but I don't believe this. There is definitely negligence, these companies have often talked about the danger of AI. They have often written about how their AI is breaking out of sandboxes or trying to manipulate the person tuning it. They should have had stronger guards and monitoring in place.

I'm not sure why you don't believe it? It's literally true? I guess if you want to believe it, go study law? I'm not really sure what to say there.

Negligence is not a crime, it's civil liability.

Gross negligence (reckless disregard for human life) is often a crime, and often there are crimes related to it (reckless driving, etc). It also does not require intent to injure, so it could be committed by, say, an operator by operating an autonomous vehicle knowing it was unsafe and could harm people. So it usually requires knowledge but not specific intent. Again, crimes like this are state specific, and sometimes even municipality specific so it's tricky to give an exact result without pinning it to a state.

However, for example, all states where autonomous vehicles are operating have statutes explicitly defining civil and criminal liability right now, so it doesn't get into the more general legal question of AI.

The same thing is already starting to happen with AI agents in general, it's just not there yet.

As i mentioned elsewhere, criminal law is often reactive, not proactive. We usually do not make things crimes until after someone has already been hurt, and society gets really upset about it. As i also mentioned elsewhere, attempts to be proactive have also rarely worked out effectively, so it's sort of lose-lose in that sense. But it usually does not take anywhere near as long as people think for law to catch up.

Post reply on HN