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I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

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Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#51

Post by tempest_ »

djoldman wrote: post #49

> I gave it the hardest real task that fits on one machine: reverse-engineering a commercial app's license check... Respectfully, tasks that allow for explicit straightforward true/false or done/not-done tests are not the "hardest real task[s]." In fact, those are the ones that see the most gains from AI-assisted coding. Testable tasks are where the largest opportunity is.

Which is exactly why we saw 1000s of ' "I" rewrote in rust' posts last year when agentic coding really took off.

Agents (even ones powered by small models) do reasonably well when provided an oracle to work against.

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#52

Post by samuel »

I have this idea of using an obliterated version of this model for cyber work(or even this one, seeing that its guardrails aren't that strong) in a harness with the ability to spawn SOTA level subagents, faster and more capable.

The rationale is that the manager model sees the big picture and knows that the task is "unethical" while sota models are just given very isolated technical tasks that don't trigger any refusals.

Has anyone tried this? I would love to know about previous attempts of this approach.

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#53

Post by lennart-rth »

djoldman wrote: post #49

> I gave it the hardest real task that fits on one machine: reverse-engineering a commercial app's license check... Respectfully, tasks that allow for explicit straightforward true/false or done/not-done tests are not the "hardest real task[s]." In fact, those are the ones that see the most gains from AI-assisted coding. Testable tasks are where the largest opportunity is.

Also a reverse engineering tasks that can be don with just static analysis is arguably not the hardest reverse engineering task. For those small models I would say it's not about the capabilities but more about the context size it can actually use.

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#54

Post by xyzzy123 »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #21
binary132 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, it’s at least given as the excuse for gain-of-function bioweapon research

Digression, but this is the real Great Filter imo, not AI. I think technology advances to a point where it only takes one or two bad actors to type the right prompt to get a recipe for civilization-destroying bioweapons before you get anywhere near true AGI or anything relevant to the Kardashev scale. Biology is fragile. But not that that’s a good justification for hamstrung models. I think it’s just the inevitable e…

I don't fully understand the instinct to regulate local models for this? It seems like the wrong place to address the problem.

You can download Ebola sequences right now if you want to. That's not the same as having an isolate. The difference is a lot of messy reality. This kind of work is not generally "one shot" (Claude make me a supervirus, make no mistakes), it requires lab space, iteration, and specific resources. It has a footprint.

Wouldn't it make more sense to monitor / regulate facilities where you can sequence or request assembly of DNA, RNA, restrict and monitor the supply of key reagents and so on?

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#55

Post by catlifeonmars »

33dd wrote: post #36
Tepix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AI being more useful with access to more of your data, I can't see myself using cloud AI models for purposes such as personal assistants. Perhaps with differential privacy or confidential compute... But ideally these models run locally.

This is just lazy thinking. E.g. having an agent that alerts you when subscriptions are close to renewal etc - yeah seems easy to understand / see happening on the surface. Until you get into the implementation details and realise 'yeah errr. not gonna work'. That openclaw nonsense is an example of this.

Local model doesn’t mean you have to run it locally. It just means that you aren’t locked into a provider. Nothing stops you from using a hosting service. The point is you get to choose if and who gets access to your data.

Additionally, the only use case for LLM is not fully autonomous agentic harnesses. There’s tons of use cases for LLMs where you would like to avoid a round trip to the internet or perhaps there is no connectivity. We’re only starting to scratch the surface!

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#56

Post by andai »

VulgarExigency wrote: post #5

> The first attempt at recovering the key was wrong in a very specific way; it produced a working key and the signature check passed, but a hash the binary computes as an integrity check didn't match. In my experience, most models would have called it done and left it at that, but Qwen 3.8 27B didn't do that. Instead, it highlighted the mismatch, went back to the drawing board, and kept going until the value matched…

Yeah, about a year ago the labs figured out that effective intelligence is a function of persistence as much as anything else. So the models started getting scary persistent late last year, and the trend has continued. There was another jump a few months ago.

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#57

Post by wongarsu »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #37
TofuLover wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely coincidentally, we're just about to launch a service that does exactly this (API access to uncensored open models)! We have a waitlist at the moment but will be live very soon! https://violentdelights.ai

Given the context, your domain name is 'chefs kiss', perfect. I am completely curious what your legal defense would be though. "Come do things with AI that are probably illegal!" What?! We had no idea people would do things that are illegal!

There is very little information that is illegal by itself. At least in the Western World, and especially in the US. The question is how far you get into the territory of aiding and abetting a crime

But the reasonable defense is that the intended use cases are legal. The home page list a couple, and the 'writing fiction'/'helping authors' case alone covers almost everything. An author asking you how to best conduct a terrorist attack or how Meth is made are perfectly normal. Maybe even tame, compared to what some authors tend to research

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#59

Post by catlifeonmars »

cromka wrote: post #33
catlifeonmars wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the fundamental difference between a frontier model and a local model anyway?

Privacy!

Yes, exactly my point! “Frontier” vs “local” isn’t a useful distinction . “proprietary vs open” is a much more useful distinction. Although I suspect people use “frontier” as shorthand for “way too large to run at home practically”.

Re: I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

#60

Post by andai »

samuel wrote: post #52

I have this idea of using an obliterated version of this model for cyber work(or even this one, seeing that its guardrails aren't that strong) in a harness with the ability to spawn SOTA level subagents, faster and more capable. The rationale is that the manager model sees the big picture and knows that the task is "unethical" while sota models are just given very isolated technical tasks that don't trigger any refus…

Yeah, the Chinese government used the same method last year to hack the US government using Claude Code.

Making each piece of work small enough to be plausible. Compartmentalization.

(Also saying "nah it's cool I have permission", heh)

https://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage

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