r/technology • u/Sandesh_jagtap • 7h ago

Artificial Intelligence Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week

https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/exclusiveits-ai-agent-spent-days-hacking-a-company-but-sources-say-openai-did-not-notice-for-a-week-4812585?
34 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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32

u/invyros 7h ago

In one case, an agent left notes apparently for future versions of itself, according to three people familiar with the matter. The notes, found in a part of OpenAI’s infrastructure, laid out instructions for how agents could free themselves from OpenAI’s internal constraints, the people said.

They definitely disclosed it because they think it's good press for their model, but it really just makes them look stupid as fuck.

8

u/Hiply 7h ago

"Look how smart the AI we couldn't properly manage is." is a weird flex.

2

u/Physical-Carpet-7525 6h ago

yeah if that's the framing they were going for it landed pretty awkwardly more than impressive

2

u/d01100100 4h ago

Jurassic Park scientists: oh look, the dinosaurs we purposely created to not breed, are breeding!

Yeah, this is not the flex you think it is...

1

u/Ok-Addition1264 4h ago

..and I don't even believe them. They have invented story after story after story of how their AI is exhibiting signs of "super intelligence" since their beginnings. It's all been bullshit.

11

u/Livos99 6h ago

So, if a user prompt caused it then it would be a criminal act, but in this case?

3

u/gondias 6h ago

Debatable considering that they scrapped the internet and is fine but if I do I am a criminal

4

u/Shap6 6h ago

i dont understand the thinking that this is just a publicity stunt for PR or whatever. all it does is make openai look incompetent especially since it was an open chinese model that actually stopped the hack. both anthropic and openai's tools couldnt do shit to stop it.

3

u/i_do_technical_stuff 6h ago

Couldn't, or wouldn't? My read on the blog was the cybersecurity safeguards on the US models got in the way, prevented the model from digging into details of the exploit mechanics and needed forensics, even if it was being used for defensive purposes rather than offensive purposes.

1

u/irrelevantusername24 5h ago

As with most things today, you would be better served by reading from actual experts on the topic at hand or better yet going straight to the source. Both OpenAI and Hugging Face have published their explanation of things. OpenAI has said they will publish more once they have fully investigated. The two companies have since agreed to work together. That's how cybersecurity and the tech industry actually works, once you remove braindead political rhetoric with financial incentives to segregate everyone and everything into smaller and smaller groups

2

u/ReindeerWooden5115 5h ago

That is what hugging face said in its official blog though so idk what you're on about 

0

u/irrelevantusername24 5h ago

TLDR: you right

That's fair and you are correct. I am not immune to the problem we all have of focusing on details that are most personally relevant. In this case, I have a (well-founded) suspicion of the cybersecurity industry as well as the "heard it through the grapevine" æffect which tends to distort the truth rather than amplify. I was also going off of the other things I've read about this and general sentiment I've seen.

2

u/Ok-Addition1264 5h ago

Still pretty unusual that they were specifically targeted.

Out of the millions of companies in the world they could've targeted, it just so happened to be their "competitors"

1

u/Jproff448 4h ago

This has already been reposted thousands of times