Thread

OpenAI agent hacked Australian government website, PM says

256 points · 198 comments · rudy6912

fidotron · 1790245854 · focus · HN ↗
The subsection <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgl73pxgndwt?post=asset%3A5d65dbad-8bab-432d-8a63-0f420744a3b0#post" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgl73pxgndwt?post=asset%3A5d6... is ridiculous.
"Cyber experts believe these systems were poorly protected - but that's not the point" is the actual subheading.
Yes, it's the point. Lots of people have been rightly saying all this stuff was inadequately secured for many years and this promotion of the idea of perfect security being even possible is a major problem.
The real story here, unsurprisingly, is government website was poorly operated and got hacked.
"This was just the latest case of AI agents ignoring laws around how to safely access online information and perhaps the most serious yet given the information was government controlled."
So who was actually running the agent? Was it sandboxed? These people, and many apparently in these labs, that believe if you just tell the agent in English what the rules are then it should follow them are at best utterly naive, and at worst deliberately dangerous.
But the fact these governments making the noise are the ones promoting mandating everyone giving up their information to be then stored so incompetently, while they point fingers around at everyone else is just beautiful. And then deploying midwit armies to tell people what to think about it . . . the AI takeover can't happen soon enough.
1. idiotsecant · 1790246849 · focus · HN ↗
  'She was asking for it' isn't a valid defense and this isn't either.
  1. fidotron · 1790247277 · focus · HN ↗
    So this is the new line around state led irresponsibility? That pointing out they're irresponsible is defending rapists?
    Come on. If "AI Agents" (scare quotes) could do it then in practice anyone could have been doing this the whole time and no one would have known.
    jptlnk · 1790262309 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree that the state is irresponsible here - if it's bad enough to be a huge deal when an agent does it, it's a huge deal.
    With that said, I do think there's an important distinction here, which is that we (hopefully) get to _choose_ if the systems we build will pursue this kind of behavior.
    I think most people would agree that a big point of social training (school, parenting, etc) is to inculcate a sense of what's acceptable and not in society. Here it seems like we're letting the agents that we've created create havoc and then we're providing a smoke screen by blaming the victim.
    IMO this is a 'for whom does the bell toll' kind of collective moment and we shouldn't be laundering this kind of agentic behavior.

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