No Stupid Questions

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 !!!!

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Plenty do.

It’s BS though.

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

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

I'm rogue Ai AMA

Why would AI be smart enough to follow the law?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.