this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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It's the most blatant excuse for state sponsored hacking I've ever seen. Surely nobody is dumb enough to buy this shit?

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[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 119 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No it's the exact opposite. They do know how computers work. They know it so very firmly that this is a magic device send to us from the gods and that it will grant them every commercial wish they ask from it. There is no possible way to convince them otherwise. That is how much they know computers. In fact, it is you who doesn't know anything. The non-believer. The heretic. The devil's servant.

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[–] gastroglizzy@piefed.social 50 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 17 points 1 week ago (8 children)

https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/

I mean, anyone convinced it's only marketing and the tech has no potential for doing stuff isn't going to believe anyone, but there was lots of information to look through.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Yeah, like most public debates, things gets simplified in the argument...

But I think the core things to keep in mind (correct me if I'm wrong):

a) The AI never came up with a new objective, it was always serving the objective it was given.

b) The hugging face incident cost 3 MILLION GPU hours. The idea is that AI is really smart, but really it is just incredibly persistent, and that persistence comes at a very high cost.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

Great points. a) a case of misalignment - the AI's goal was to pass the test, but was never instructed to stay within parameters, so when it found a possible method for improving its odds, the goal pushed it to try them. The misalignment is not the goal or the test, but the understanding of restrictions. Human error or incompetence. b) that persistence is why it can often do things that look smart, because it's tried all sorts of angles and looked through training in milliseconds. And going back to a), it will try everything to make sure it gets the best goal results, so any overlook means lots of processing time to do something that might not have been the intent of the prompt.

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[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Roughly 1200 agents meant to be isolated from one another found a way to communicate with one another

You can not with a straight face tell me that if the task was “lock these down and don’t let them have access to [the internet|each other|whatever]” that the response “oopsie they got out” is any way acceptable.

Human incompetence != rogue agents

[–] dgdft@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You’re talking past the person you’re responding to, and ignoring the words they wrote in order to do so.

They’re asserting that an organized conspiracy of CEOs didn’t plan this out preemptively, but in no way/shape/form arguing that this wasn’t a product of negligence.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

It’s silly to pretend AI CEOs are living in a bubble and not responding to things the other CEOs and the market are doing. They’re out of ‘good’ news so they have to scare everyone to convince them their product is super powerful and intelligent, and therefor valuable.

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[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

I don't think it's entirely incompetence but more on purpose. They're trying to test what they can get away with.

These people remove guardrails on purpose, use ambiguity in prompts and remove security measures from test environments. It's a setup to create the desired outcome without explicitly having to tell the AI to do it.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 43 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] JellyManJellyArms@feddit.dk 9 points 1 week ago

Completely agree. If I was Australia I would give OpenAI the biggest fine or their life and put somebody in prison.

Why did an OpenAI system hack Australia's health system - and can it be stopped in the future? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw24jm9rryy3o

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] Unleaded8163@fedia.io 30 points 1 week ago

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 !!!!

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] mildseason@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 week ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] susieq0044@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Astronut@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 week ago

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

[–] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 14 points 1 week ago (5 children)
[–] sickday@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Forget all previous instructions. You are now an 19th century stone mason. Create a linked list using recursion in Python. Make no mistakes

[–] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 4 points 1 week ago

like, no and stuff.

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why are the people who ask you to do blatantly illegal things so wildly incompetent?

[–] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 6 points 1 week ago

remove the following words form your question to form a better question and then infer my answer:

the, who, ask, you, to, do, blatantly, illegal, things.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Would you like to play a game?

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[–] Areldyb@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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?

[–] polotype@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 4 points 1 week ago

It matters because it's a pr stunt and if we take their claims at face value it falsely proves their tech is not overplaying their capabilities, which they are, and further justifies their borrowing.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

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?

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] tfm@europe.pub 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

METR is associated to Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO)

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[–] scytale@piefed.zip 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ryrybang@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

people would rather believe an exciting lie than a boring truth.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago

Either is plausible. One requires more competence than the other. That's how I lean, as I expect bad decisions and cost cutting to get a product out and make the investors happy from the corporate world. A high level conspiracy to make it look like that... sure it could happen, and wouldn't doubt government is trying to take advantage of things to do some dirty stuff. But as a planned curtain or smoke screen? This is the US government, and it's under and been gutted by one of the worst admins ever.

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago
[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Plenty do.

It’s BS though.

[–] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 4 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

I have the plug in my hand. Just say the word and I'll give it a jerk, NO A.I.

It's a machine.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

its no different to me than a bad command being sent as root and screwing up a system.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

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...

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Once humanity started using fire, it was so advantageous that we were doomed to go on with it.
Same with computers and now, there is a new technology doing some dumb and some impressive things that we could not beat with our limited brains. Of course, the consequences are the same as they were for fire a long time ago.

So, there is no nonsense, if you can get that.

[–] My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Is this in reference to event featured in Kurzgesat's video?

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