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Comment by user43928 | Hacker News Reader

In the US, hacking laws require intent.

Software behaving differently than intended is therefore not a crime under these laws.

I think a competent DA could easily prove that, if you know the model is capable of performing unauthorized breaches into third-party systems when given a task, and you give it a task that could require it to do so, intent is present.

It's not a complicated distinction:

If you think they intentionally had their model hack third-party systems, you could do a criminal investigation.

I do not think that this is reasonable to believe given that clearly the VMs were not intended to have internet access and that committing such crimes wasn't in anyone's interest.

I think, at some point, after the third incident of the models escaping containment, it becomes reasonable to say that, if nothing else, they were incredibly negligent.

Do you have an example where they gave a task that required breaching in a way that was easily foreseeable ?

I don't, because I'm not a prosecutor with access to discovery, subpoenas, etc.

Negligence is still a possibility, if there are significant reasonably foreseeable consequences.

I think there’s a strong argument that it was hard to foresee the consequences since it was all new. This won’t be true if those incidents continue happening tho.

Where does negligence come into play?

In criminal hacking law that explicitly requires intent, or a civil lawsuit about damages?

I honestly don't know, but my guess would be the latter.

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