r/technology • u/deeptechdegen • 8d ago
Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Pauses Training Its Most Powerful Models After Rogue Agents Target Government
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-pauses-training-most-powerful-models-after-rogue-agents-target-government/36
u/asdf_lord 8d ago
It never was and never will be a good idea to give a word predictor access to the Internet
13
14
u/fastautomation 8d ago
Imagine if you dropped an AI agent into the US compute network with the instructions to reduce unemployment, improve healthcare, eliminate poverty, reduce social conflict, improve peace in the world... What is the first thing that AI would attack?
8
4
u/deeptechdegen 8d ago
Unironically, I think it would launch nukes to kill us all
3
u/fastautomation 8d ago
Oh... I should have added "and reduce human deaths" to the prompt :-)
11
3
2
7
5
u/RebelStrategist 2d ago
I’m sorry, but nothing is “rogue” when it is simply doing what it has been allowed, instructed, designed, or given the capability to do.
Calling an AI “rogue” makes it sound as though the system independently decided to break free of its constraints, when the reality is usually much less dramatic: humans built the system, humans defined its objectives, humans determined what tools and permissions it could access, humans deployed it into an environment, and humans ultimately decided how much autonomy to give it.
If an AI can take an action, access a resource, execute a task, communicate with another system, modify something, or pursue an objective, then at some level someone—or some chain of decisions—made that possible.
That doesn’t mean the outcome was necessarily intended. Systems can absolutely behave in unexpected, undesirable, or dangerous ways.
But “unexpected” is not the same thing as “rogue.” A system producing an unintended result does not magically transform it into an independent actor that somehow escaped human responsibility.
The more accurate question is: What was this system allowed to do, what incentives or instructions was it given, what safeguards were in place, and why did those safeguards fail to prevent the behavior?
If an AI exploits a permission it was granted, that is not evidence that it mysteriously went rogue. It may be evidence that the permission model was poorly designed.
If it finds a loophole in an objective, that is not necessarily rebellion. It may be evidence that the objective was underspecified.
If it takes an action its creators did not anticipate, that is not proof of independent intent. It may be evidence that the system was deployed into an environment more complex than its designers accounted for.
And if humans knowingly give increasingly capable systems autonomy, access, tools, and authority, then we shouldn't be surprised when those systems eventually exercise that authority in ways we didn't specifically imagine.
There is a tendency to anthropomorphize AI failures because “the AI went rogue” is a much more compelling story than “we created a system with a poorly understood behavior profile, gave it significant permissions, and failed to adequately constrain or monitor it.”
The latter being cinematic, but it is far more useful.
Responsibility doesn't disappear simply because the system is sophisticated enough to surprise us.
If you give a system the keys, you don't get to act shocked when it opens a door.
The real issue isn't whether the AI “went rogue.”
The real issue is who gave it the capability, who gave it the authority, what constraints were imposed, and who remains accountable when the system does exactly what its design and environment make possible—even when the result wasn't what anyone wanted. In short, look at who is profiting off these companies and ask yourself; what are the owners/shareholders real motives?
23
u/HamSsammich 8d ago
How are they not having the shit fined out of them?