No harm, no foul. Dog owners are on the hook for damages resulting from their dogs, but there must be some damage in the first place. If the dog gets loose and goes in your fenced backyard, disregarding your "no trespassing" sign, you can't punish the dog owner just because. Hacking into a server is closer to the latter. At best rubygems can claim some cleanup costs.

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datsci_est_2015 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tell that to the script kiddies with a criminal record for "hacking" into their school's computer systems by entering "username: admin" and "password: password".

	▲	gruez 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, because in that case you'd have a hard time convincing the court that the access wasn't intentional. You might not know the law existed, but you intended to access the system. You'd have a pretty solid defense if you ran a crawler that was crawling every website ever, and stumbled upon some secure site. In fact there are companies which does this exact thing, eg. shodan.

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wmf 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If any remediation was required, that's damage. This looks a lot smaller than the HuggingFace hack but it still required some cleanup.

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scotty79 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Remediation mostly involved repairing pre-exising holes in the fences that the dog crawled through.

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sdf4j 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Since when isn’t that a cyber attack?

	▲	gruez 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because "attack" implies intent. Accidentally break a window? You might be on the hook to fix it, but you're not going to jail. Break the same window at 3am, while carrying a duffel bag and other burglary tools? Well that's (attempted) burglary, even if you chicken out and didn't steal anything.

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none2585 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not really true. Unauthorized access to a system is a crime regardless if there was damage.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

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gruez 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You read your own source?

>having knowingly accessed [...]

>intentionally accesses a computer without authorization [...]

	▲	magicalist 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		intentionality was not what you were addressing, nor was it what the GP was clearly responding to.

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none2585 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah I see you're releasing OpenAI from being the one controlling the tools and giving the agent agency.

I'd argue they intentionally accessed systems they weren't meant to as they were the ones running the bots.

I don't think you or I would get the same leniency if a bot on our network did the same.

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gruez 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>I don't think you or I would get the same leniency if a bot on our network did the same.

Well yeah, because if you coded a bot, realistically the two options are: 1) bot that crawls random sites/computers 2) bot that crawls random sites/computers, while trying a password list. The former is probably legal, there are whole companies dedicated to doing that, eg. shodan. With the latter, it's pretty obvious you're intending to break into computers, and hard to argue otherwise. Where openai lies on the spectrum between the first case and the second case is up for debate, but it's hard to argue it's anywhere close to the latter. Maybe you'd have a point if openai gave it a prompt like "you're a hacker for anonymous, just do whatever :)".

	▲	Sharlin an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> but it's hard to argue it's anywhere close to the latter. No it absolutely isn’t. These things did not learn hacking from thin air.

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p-e-w 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No harm, no foul.

What? That’s not how criminal law works, at all.

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gruez 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, that's actually how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

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rpeden 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Recklessness is a mens rea and given how often OpenAI and its spokespeople talk about safety and alignment, it's hard to argue they were unaware of the risk.

https://lawprof.co/definition/recklessness/

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gruez 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>it's hard to argue they were unaware of the risk.

So what does it mean for an owner of a german sheppard, who specifically got it because they want a ferocious dog that can bite intruders, then it turned out it bit the mailman? Should that be considered a crime (assault) in addition to paying the mailman's medical bills? That's not to say there's no circumstance where recklessness might be warranted, eg. if you let loose a bear in an elementary school, but you'd have to argue for more than "they hacked someone" and "they knew about the risks".

	▲	Sharlin an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Should that be considered a crime Yes, of course! Negligent cause of injury or whatever it’s called in your particular jurisdiction. Wasn’t difficult to find examples of cases just like that. It would be astonishingly unjust if the postman had to personally sue for damages in civil court! Your stance in this debate is, honestly, flabbergasting.
	▲	shkkmo an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Depending on the facts of the case they could indeed be convicted of a crime. There was a infamous case recently where a woman was convicted of criminally negligent homicide due to owning a dangerous dog that killed a kid. https://www.mcda.us/index.php/news/portland-area-woman-convi... Owning a dog that has been trained to bite intrudes is a significant responsibility and owning such a dog without taking the correct precautions is criminal.