[Jamesbeam]

These companies have billions of dollars. Their product can hack into unsecured environments autonomously. They obviously have no clue what their product is doing, or a way to intervene when it starts connecting to the open internet and is going on a CRIME SPREE…unnoticed…for days.

Altman and Amodei give me stupid billionaire kid Alien Earth vibes. Let’s see how long it takes until they get eaten by their own creation.

Stupid kids playing with fire.

If you hacked one of those companies, the FBI would kick in your doors and you will have a pretty bad day. If AI companies do it, they get to use doing crime for marketing purposes? WTF?

And whoever designed their containment protocols should be living under a bridge effective immediately.

It’s the equivalent of a level 5 biocontainment lab leaving a glass tube in the staff kitchen unsupervised and hoping nobody thinks it’s an energy shot, before leaving home and infecting the rest of the planet. We all know what happened 28 days later.

This is usually the point where the military seizes your tech because you clearly showed you are incompetent in using a dual-use product safely and reliably.

The other option is regulation and actually putting engineers and the CEOs behind bars for life if this happens again.

These idiots, and I mean Altman and Amodei, walk around and use massive containment failures of a dangerous technology as marketing gimmicks.

Oh look, guys, our model has hacked into three companies, we are much better than openAI who only breached two companies with their inferior product, it sometimes adds girl schools to a target package, but be sure we trained it to not kill American children, yes we also sell for military use. Can I take your order?

Testing should only be allowed with on-premise data. You give the AI access to networking around the country, and those data centre locations have so many third parties that can and will fuck up that it’s simply impossible to have proper containment protocols outside military compounds.

It’s also like every journalist in the US is personally invested in AI somehow and simply doesn’t want to ask the important questions.

As the public, we have the right to see the containment protocols and where it all went wrong, but journalists collectively look like they got used to suck dick when it comes to AI.

Absolutely insane.

[solenoid0937]

> If AI companies do it, they get to use doing crime for marketing purposes?

What exactly here is marketing? They are not bragging about the capabilities of Claude (the attacks are incredibly basic). They are admitting to s mundane and dumb network misconfiguration.

This is a standard somewhat embarrassing disclosure.

> the military seizes your tech

> behind bars for life

This is how you get companies to stop disclosing. I don't think you realize how easy it is to just not notice things.

[Jamesbeam]

No, its not just a dumb network configuration. They are not treating this with the seriousness it needs to be treated.

It’s a combination of a complete containment failure on top of the utter incompetence by the engineers to identify the breach and stop the product from doing cybercrime on the public, open internet. Heads need to roll for this.

I don’t care if it’s easy to miss. If you have a billion dollars and can’t offer a proper containment protocol, it’s not the problem of the public who has to suffer the full blow if your product goes on a rampage on the open internet for days. It’s not like this happened in a millisecond.

Instead, they go on a PR tour. Of course, the message is look what our product can do. Otherwise, they would have pushed for criminal charges against the people responsible for all of this by themselves. You do the crime, you do the time. The defence that the AI did it, is not going well in front of a court.

This is a good time to put one or two engineers behind bars to teach the rest that serious threats to the public have serious consequences, and you get charged like you did the crime yourself if the system you are responsible for starts doing illegal stuff.

What other precedent is set here otherwise? People in AI labs trying to play god are outside the law?

> This is how you get companies to stop disclosing. I don't think you realise how easy it is to just not notice things.

If you have technology this dangerous that it poses a threat to public safety, you need to stop using the technology until you can prove this won’t happen again. Then be put under strict supervision, everything needs to be logged, recorded and looked at.

If your toddler just almost burned down the house, do you give him another set of matches and hope for the best?

[solenoid0937]

> Instead, they go on a PR tour. Of course, the message is look what our product can do.

Literally nothing in this post comes across as bragging. A PR fluff piece would not call Claude "unsophisticated." PR fluff pieces do not admit to legal wrongdoing.

> Otherwise, they would have pushed for criminal charges against the people responsible for all of this by themselves. You do the crime, you do the time.

You want them... to put themselves in jail? I doubt you'd hold yourself to the same standard if you made a mistake.

> If your toddler just almost burned down the house, do you give him another set of matches and hope for the best?

> This is a good time to put one or two engineers behind bars

If an airplane manufacturer makes a dumb mistake, do you put their engineers in jail? No.

You do not understand the psychological dynamics at play here in the slightest. You aren't even trying to understand. If the government was anywhere close to this punitive with the AI companies, they would simply stop disclosing, the end. This was the result of a proactive investigation. Do you understand what happens in your universe? Those investigations don't even begin. If they somehow begin, the results are fudged.

This has been proven time and time again across every industry where safety is relevant. You do not have some special insight here that sufficiently challenges the lessons of history. Just a desire to see people burn.

[Jamesbeam]

‎> Literally nothing in this post comes across as bragging. A PR fluff piece would not call Claude "unsophisticated”. PR fluff pieces do not admit to legal wrongdoing.

I disagree. You’re just not the right audience to see it. But I think it’s totally fine that we have a different opinion here and I don’t want to convince you that I am right, and you’re wrong, because you are not wrong, you simply have a different perspective.

> You want them... to put themselves in jail? I doubt you'd hold yourself to the same standard if you made a mistake.

Yes, that’s what I expect from you if you play at that level, because that is the standard of responsibility you need to handle this kind of power.

And yes, I pretty much hold myself to the same standard because I have a zero CIVCAS track record from my time in the military and I had power over life and death every single day.

With great power comes great responsibility is not just a Spiderman quote. If you fuck up this royally, you have to look for something you are good at that allows you to be in stoner code bro mode all day long, but you don’t belong at the frontline.

> If an airplane manufacturer makes a dumb mistake, do you put their engineers in jail? No.

Yeah, they do. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28276654 Headline could just as well be Bogus AI Engineer jailed over safety checks.

> You do not understand the psychological dynamics at play here in the slightest. You aren't even trying to understand. If the government was anywhere close to this punitive with the AI companies, they would simply stop disclosing, the end.

I think you don’t understand. All an engineer needs is a bit of sunlight, food, and a computer to work from. You don’t get to choose to stop disclosing if the military gets involved. You’re either doing what is asked of you or you are a national security risk. And you really don't want to be a national security risk.

[solenoid0937]

> You don’t get to choose to stop disclosing

That's just the thing. You do. And it's very easy to do.

Airline pilots no longer disclose mental illnesses. Even Air Force pilots do not usually disclose mental illness. They often don't disclose vision problems. Is that not a national security risk?

It is very easy to just... not check for things. Or if you check for things, to check for them incorrectly. Or if you checked for them correctly, to ignore or misinterpret the findings. Or if you have a genuine finding, to just not report it to anyone.

Disclosure is an active process that requires trust, and that trust comes from knowing that there will not be unreasonably punitive measures. That if you fix things in good faith and contribute to the safety body of knowledge, things will be okay.

It doesn't matter if "the military is involved." Or if "it's a national security risk." Do you think someone faced with life-altering punishment if they disclose gives a shit about that? They won't - again, see aviation's mental health crisis. Pilots will risk a psychotic break in the cockpit rather than have their careers destroyed.

Punishing people won't get someone to disclose. Disclosure requires mutual trust, and by throwing people in jail for mistakes, you break that trust and people will stop disclosing.

[Jamesbeam]

I get you.

And you seem to be a decent person. I appreciate that you step up for the engineers and that you try to explain to me that humans are humans and humans make mistakes, and trust me, you are not the first person frustrated with how my brain works.

There is no argument to win here. This is just a matter of perspective.

Your concern is with the individual engineer and the personal consequences they, and if you sit in jail, also their friends and family will suffer from.

It’s also pretty clear from your examples. Your Good Samaritan views on things are noble, but they make you blind to simple causality.

You attribute the failure to disclose conditions that make you unfit for duty to a trust problem with a third party but that is not the case.

In reality, it’s a severe flaw of character.

If you risk the lives of hundreds or thousands in the case of the Airforce pilot because you’re unfit, then it is simply selfish.

It’s not the passengers fault, or the tower’s, or some Generals.

My concern on the other hand is with everyone else.

We can argue for days and not get any further.

I sent some mails and voiced my concerns. Let’s see if someone in charge of things like this will agree and have a closer look at what the kids in the AI labs do all day with their toys.

Thank you for the exchange and stay a decent person.