Thread

OpenAI bots meddled with multiple US Government agency sites

132 points · 196 comments · Betelbuddy

nr378 · 1790447278 · focus · HN ↗
This seems like more co-ordinated propaganda to try to help OpenAI and Anthropic create a cartel and win their anti-trust waiver.
The key sentence beneath the headline: "OpenAI said all of the government data accessed by bots was public."
[1] <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/09/26/open-ai-governments-chatbots-hacking/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/09/26/open-ai-gove...
[2] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/openais-ai-us-government-websites.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/openais-ai-us-...
[3] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw62jje658dlo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw62jje658dlo
1. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1790448418 · focus · HN ↗
  The NYT wrote:
  "With the Education Department, OpenAI’s technology tried to hack the website to gather data from the department’s civil rights office but failed, researchers from the A.I. research firm Transluce said."
  So a third party apparently confirmed that a hack was attempted.
  The NYT also writes:
  "No A.I. company has been involved with as many disclosures of rogue incidents as OpenAI."
  I think there is a certain amount of mental gymnastics needed to believe that they are establishing themselves as the industry leader in rogue incidents, as a strategy to gain an antitrust edge.
  The public is paying close attention to the AI industry. That's the regime in which regulatory capture and similar strategies would be expected to fail: <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/what-regulatory-capture-actually-looks-like.html" rel="nofollow">https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/wh...
  Sam and Dario have been doomers, or doomer-adjacent, for something like a decade at this point.
  Occam's Razor is simply that they believe what they are saying about AI doom.
  1. dgellow · 1790448999 · focus · HN ↗
    It doesn’t really matter if they believed or not initially, the dynamics at play now are completely different and both companies are facing increasing competition and costs of doing business, with no path to profitability. I’m pretty sure that takes priority over their personal beliefs
    0xDEAFBEAD · 1790449497 · focus · HN ↗
    Dario requested "a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations."
    <a href="https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier" rel="nofollow">https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier
    I'm not seeing how that solves his 3rd-party competition problem.
    dmix · 1790460042 · focus · HN ↗
    People have a hard time believing Dario actually believes this stuff. But nothing from his entire track record from the early days until now indicates otherwise. Calling it all marketing or anti-competitive play is just typical social media, where they want to eliminate all nuance and make it reductive as possible to fit a convenient narrative.
    dgellow · 1790462465 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m on record explaining why I believe Dario is a true believer since decades. That doesn’t change anything about the current dynamic, which is about Anthropic the company and not Dario’s personal beliefs
    [deleted] · 1790466982 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

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