There's no such thing as "OpenAI agents" attacked RubyGems. It's someone used agents to attack RubyGems. If they work at OpenAI then it's someone at OpenAI. And if they did it unintentionally, they still did it.

Analogy: if a someone's involved when a person dies, it's manslaughter or murder based on intent. They're different, but they're both crimes.

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pavlov 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

“KGB agents are spying on me” is the same thing as “KGB is spying on me”, is it not?

An agent is an entity acting on someone’s behalf.

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renjimen 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

KGB's agents are human, OpenAI's agents are not. It's an important distinction because humans are responsible for their behaviour, while AI agents are not.

You cannot try an AI agent in a court of law, despite the anthropomorphising work the word "agent" is doing.

	▲	flatline 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. It’s still just software, which someone programmed and deployed to do specifically dangerous/malicious things. I feel like we already have legislation and case law surrounding this.

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qarl 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This distinction is silly.

We say "Google's web crawlers scape web pages." We don't insist you say "Google uses web crawlers to scrape web pages."

We describe software as having agency all the time. It's typical usage and it's efficient and it's well understood.

And we don't get angry when they're used interchangeably.

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evrydayhustling 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

In this case, who holds the agency is exactly the point. Anthropic and OAI are claiming we need protection from AI itself, but the statement supported by putting agency in the right place is that we need protection from them.

	▲	qarl 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think those companies are referring to other companies - say Chinese AI companies - who we also need protection from.

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simonebrunozzi 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would agree with you generally, but in this particular case, the distinction seems important because a significant percentage of the world population believes that agents can be self-aware, a-là Terminator etc.

	▲	qarl 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I hate to spoil your mood - but it is currently unclear whether agents can be self-aware. And it's very likely something that can never be known.

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dingdongditchme 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

oh we do! At least they google is quite good at adhering to robots.txt.

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high_priest 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I very much say "Google uses web crawlers to scrape web pages." and if something breaks, or some data is stolen, everyone else is going to be saying that Google has to take responsibility.

	▲	qarl 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Those are two different issues. One is about typical speech patterns and one is about liability. I agree with you on the liability issue, but I don't think there much question about this issue outside the anti-AI conspiracy campaigns. And I disagree with your typical usage claim. I myself tend to use the phrase that has the fewest words in all cases. It's like the rule against using passive tense when writing.

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sedawkgrep 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Google's web crawlers are automated and that's part of their business practice.

The attack here is neither of those things.

	▲	qarl 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That distinction doesn't matter to my point.