Comment by fidotron
7 hours ago
The subsection 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.
I completely agree. The govt IT vendor is at fault here since it seems the data was just unprotected.
If you can’t stop openai from accidentally, or at least non-maliciously, accessing my private info.. then you definitely can’t stop the bad guys!
The point is moot anyways. All info about everyone is out there for the taking now by a half-competent AI prompter. What do we do about that is the real question?
> The point is moot anyways. All info about everyone is out there for the taking now by a half-competent AI prompter. What do we do about that is the real question?
It's like filing your gov tax return in a five eyes country: you guys actually know the answer already, just save me the trouble. But we have to act like they haven't been spying the whole time.
If we actually distributed the benefits of mass surveillance and privacy invasion (and now add wilful copyright infringement) then it would be enormously less objectionable.
there can be more than one side at fault
Exactly, the whole fence analogy is ridiculous. A better analogy would be an open door inside a public building and saying: "there were no signs allowing access to that door"
> 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
The "I am AI and can may mistakes" disclaimer is evidently inadequate. We need "I am (so-called) AI, rather stupid, and inherenly unreliable."
'She was asking for it' isn't a valid defense and this isn't either.
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.
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.
If someone forgets to lock their door that suddenly doesn't make it legal to break into their house and steal their shit.
The same principal applies to government sites. If something is poorly secured and adversaries are using it to steal stuff then there are avenues to report it and get it fixed up.
>But the fact these governments making the noise are the ones promoting mandating everyone giving up their information to be then stored so incompetently,
The governments in these cases are bought by the very people you're defending. They're using it as a convenient proxy because they know people like you won't look behind the curtain and see corporations pushing this shit so that they can steal freely and just point elsewhere.
Yes, but if you leave your door open then it is only tresspassing, not breaking and entering.
No, that is false and depend on how breaking and entering is codified. Some states here in the US codify it as any unlawful entry into a building, others require minimal force to qualify.