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Comment by ghusbands | Hacker News Reader

This argument comes up a lot. It would turn everyone whose device became part of a botnet into a criminal. There's a reason that intent is important in law.

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People in "self-driving" cars getting into accidents are already put on trial for negligence. I don't see why people using self-driving computers can't be held to the same standards.

In this case, it's not even about the people driving self-driving cars. It's like someone launching a car into traffic just to see what would happen. Even Tesla puts a human in the car when they do their self-driving trials, it's almost impressive that AI companies have somehow managed to out-neglige Tesla.

The OpenAI swarm used someone's open source ShowHN project [1] to "hack" the Australian government. It seems that was not that developer's intent, and they're getting a heavy lesson today in why services don't have free tiers with friction free signup, and require credit cards upfront or ID documents.

If you're arguing that they should be put on trial for negligence, that's fine. It does seem we're moving towards open source being outlawed, or at least the end of "no liability" clauses in open source & freeware. Just make sure that is the result you're advocating for.

[For the future record: at the time I am posting the link below on 24 September, it has 1 point, no comments, and the poster has a karma of 1. This is not an active HN user, or a ShowHN project that had traction, beyond seemingly OpenAI's swarm.]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46850291

Nonsense. The API made available in good faith isn't the problem here. The company that used its servers to use and abuse the wider internet to hack the Australian government is.

If the developer behind ShotAPI had started letting the ShotAPI code take shots at the Austrlian government then yes, ShotAPI (or rather, the people behind it) would be responsible.

Blaming ShotAPI would be like blaming OpenAI for what its users are doing. That's not what's happening here. And if ShotAPI did knowingly let its users somehow hack the Australian government, then maybe they should be investigated.

At the end of the day you still get called as a party in a lawsuit and are compelled by the threat of violence to be part of the hearing if required, as the defense will automatically bring them into the case.

>would be like blaming OpenAI for what its users are doing

Yes, this is how lawsuits work in the real world, you cast a wide net and compel discovery from all parties involved.

It's not the same. People owning routers don't publish self-serving articles about their routers having this capability which is very dangerous and scary. That is, becoming part of botnet is completely unintended outcome, and most people are not suspecting it's even happening. It's not advertised and it's not bought, used or sold for this reason.

Owning a gun, writing articles about how powerful and dangerous your gun is, then making deals based on ability of your gun to kill people, and then getting completely astonished that "my gun killed some people, completely bonkers! (invest now)". It's not possible for the selling point of your product to be unintended.

Well it's illegal to "hack" my phone and turn it into part of a botnet.

What you're saying is that we would hold a gun owner responsible if someone broke into their house, stole their sidearm, and then shot a victim with it. Pretty sure we would not.

What OpenAi is doing is more like shooting a gun into the sky. Not only is that a felony on its own in most jurisdictions, if someone dies that's an additional felony. It's less serious than first degree murder, sure.

There's a reason that negligence is important in law.

Maybe this would force people to look what they are buying and demand better.

Could/should not every incident after the discovery of the first incident be considered criminal negligence? What happens when an agent eventually causes material damage to another company, government systems, banking, critical infrastructure etc, surely the source company is guilty of something and if not disclosed or a coverup is attempted is that not conspiracy. From the victims perspective they don't care if the source is OpenAI or Russian hackers.

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