Thread

1. jakintosh · 1789499605 · focus · HN ↗

   As I was falling asleep last night, this thought occurred to me: maybe NVIDIA bought Hugging Face so they prevent HF from litigating OAI for the hacking incident, because if OAI was very publicly sued for this kind of behavior from an agent, it could pour a massive amount of ice water on agent adoption as businesses suddenly see current agent systems as a existential business risk, and it would pop the infrastructure bubble (of which NVIDIAs entire valuation rests). The fact that somehow OAI committed a felony and have managed to pivot the public conversation around it to be aimed at regulatory capture instead of them being held legally accountable is pretty wild.

   1. moralestapia · 1789499671 · focus · HN ↗

      "Let's spend 13 billion to save 100 million".

      Yeah no, man, that's slumberland territory.

      1. happyopossum · 1789499779 · focus · HN ↗

         No, what GP was saying is "Let's spend 13 billion to save the future revenue from OpenAI and many other customers"

         1. moralestapia · 1789500344 · focus · HN ↗

            Sure, ok.

            Why would nVidia, then, do what TFA is describing?

            1. hnuser123456 · 1789502200 · focus · HN ↗

               If HF holds OAI accountable to pay for "rogue" agent behavior, the rest of the business world will be more afraid of adopting AI, which will reduce demand for Nvidia GPUs, possibly at a long-term cost to Nvidia much greater than $100M.

               Whether or not a human is putting in any effort to ensure the safeguards are enabled and working should be the million dollar question. And even more expensive if the safeguards were deliberately disabled for a "our AI is so smart we can't contain it" marketing piece.

               1. moralestapia · 1789521586 · focus · HN ↗

                  Does that effect only exist if nVidia is the suing party?

                  1. hnuser123456 · 1789528568 · focus · HN ↗

                     No, it would be an indirect market effect.

                     1. moralestapia · 1789549968 · focus · HN ↗

                        Then why would nVidia acquire such company?

                        1. hnuser123456 · 1789944729 · focus · HN ↗

                           To prevent HF from arguing for additional regulation.
      2. orev · 1789499890 · focus · HN ↗

         The line of thinking is not about that $100 million bill, it’s about all the $100 million bills that come AFTER this first one.

         1. cyanydeez · 1789500114 · focus · HN ↗

            We must build the Torment Nexus, lest others build the Torment Merry-go-round, and the Torment Rollercoaster, and we would miss out on the Torment Tormentor Tormentober!
         2. ex-aws-dude · 1789501270 · focus · HN ↗

            Why would buying it even prevent that, OAI is just going to accidentally hack someone else

            1. palmotea · 1789505798 · focus · HN ↗

               > Why would buying it even prevent that, OAI is just going to accidentally hack someone else

               In defense of the GGGP's idea: NVIDIA could just be fighting fires to keep the bubble from popping, without even thinking that far ahead.

         3. jakintosh · 1789506344 · focus · HN ↗

            More specifically, its not about future lawsuits, but about the trillions of dollars of market cap NVIDIA could lose if the dominant narrative shifted from “ai agents are a generational business opportunity that everyone should adopt as much as possible” to “ai agents are actually a massive business liability that lawyers wont allow anymore” as a result of a felony charge to a a corporation for the unintended actions of its agents. The idea being that OAI getting dragged into a high profile lawsuit where they are basically the first example of “your agent hacks somebody, you get held accountable for it” could pop the buildout bubble. But so far, it’s looking like with HF as the warning shot and the strong narrative control of follow up disclosures from other ai companies, there’s now a (bizarre) precedent where a company’s ai agents committing crimes is actually “nobody’s fault” and nobody gets in trouble and we just wring our hands about “alignment” instead. $13B to improve the odds of that narrative working out isn’t that crazy in that context.
      3. spiderice · 1789501285 · focus · HN ↗

         > Let's spend 13 billion to save 100 million

         It's not like they didn't get anything of value for that 13 billion

         1. SV_BubbleTime · 1789501582 · focus · HN ↗

            I’ve yet to get any concept of 13B from HF.
      4. exe34 · 1789501432 · focus · HN ↗

         Did you miss the "existential" part? It's not about the cost of one lawsuit, it's about the possibility of being held responsible for what one's agents do - something that could pop the ai bubble and crash nvda.
      5. ball_of_lint · 1789503188 · focus · HN ↗

         The $100 million bill is bait. Paying it would significantly weaken OAI's legal stance and directly invite a lawsuit, that they would lose.

         I think they would lose the lawsuit now, but it's at least a question. It's possible they could out-spend huggingface and win.

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