they didn't "miss that". the "hacks" were intentional stunts designed to exaggerate the intelligence of the models in an effort to pump their valuations ahead of IPO so they can offload their bag to retail investors

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reasonableklout 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Irregular was not involved in the Hugging Face incident.

And there is no reason for the companies to "exaggerate the intelligence of the models" when there are plenty of other non-felony milestones they are achieving, like solving Millenium Prize math problems.

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BearOso 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Navier-Stokes thing? They had hundreds of segmented groups of 10000 agents running trying to solve that. I can't imagine the expense. For what little publicity it got, it wasn't worth it. There are also reports they cheated by using data from a couple human researchers, but I don't think that one's true.

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financetechbro 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Solving math problems does not drive investor hype. Saying your models can take over the world, which can lead one to assume that they can do every day office work, does indeed drive investor hype.

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r_lee 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

honestly, the hacking incidents have caused a lot more interest and media attention than the math stuff IMO.

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reasonableklout 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/10/openai-hugging-face-senate-...

And on this website, the math stuff is getting more clicks:

- Navier Stokes - Tristan Buckmaster (2050 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915

- HuggingFace incident discussion (1632 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997548

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r_lee 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

interesting.

> Sure, interest like an incoming congressional investigation

I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho.

they'll go on and talk about how dangerous AI and the models are and why they should be regulated and given licenses to operate such models and others should be walled off

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reasonableklout an hour ago | parent [-]

First, it's not at all clear OpenAI will get what it wants from the investigation. It seems just as likely to me that OAI gets hit with massive fines, just as Meta was recently.

> I feel like that's exactly what they wanted tho.

It's also what the majority of Americans want. This was the case even before Hugging Face, see for example [1] where 68% of Americans supported a formal review process for frontier models.

So at some level, you are saying "the evil labs are opening up the industry to democratic control, and their evil plan will result in the outcome that most people want!"

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/29/tigh...

	▲	AnimalMuppet an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The claim is that the evil labs are opening up the industry to very carefully manipulated democratic control. It's astroturf, not grassroots. I wouldn't call that "democratic control", even though it uses the machinery of democracy.

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kridsdale1 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Investigation which could ideally lead to regulatory capture and the banning of open weights, thus ensuring Anthropic’s revenue.

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datakan 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“There’s no such thing as bad press”

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a2tech 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is this so difficult for people to grasp? These are stunts. People are falling for them. Stop it.

	▲	JoshTriplett 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Cynicism misfire. AI companies are, rightfully, heavily distrusted. But the right application of cynicism is not "existential risk is a marketing campaign"; that's absurd motivated reasoning. The right application of cynicism, here, is "they're only saying things now because they see the writing on the wall and want to try to push for self-regulation rather than the desperately needed actual regulation and treaty".

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Georgelemental 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it really that impossible to believe that these might be real? I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but "they committed a bunch of felonies and then publicly admitted to them in order to look good" just makes 0 sense. Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies? I haven't seen them…

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2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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fc417fc802 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a straw man. The theory is that they committed felonies in order to get the regulator to move in the manner they'd like.

Also one can look bad to the general public while also appearing technically excellent. When a significant fraction already vaguely dislike you that could be quite an attractive proposition.

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Barrin92 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies?

everywhere, I talked to a Palantir guy once and he said "every time someone paints us as a Bond Villain the stock prices go up", have you already forgotten how Cambridge Analytica marketed itself to clients?

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elmer2 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, when Obama and Hillary used them, geniuses. Only evil when Trump did the same thing.

Odd how that works.

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fidotron 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/my-co...

And the entire FB app industry was doing it.

The whole Cambridge Analytica thing was one of the oddest most bizarrely specific media manufactured scandals that conveniently focused very narrowly and utterly ignored the bigger picture, much like the media are currently doing with something else.

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alex1138 an hour ago | parent [-]

CA is a scandal primarily due to account escalation, I thought. Not about who got elected

But shadow ads can be a problem too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSMr-3GGvQ (you can be pro-Brexit but ads like this are still a problem)

	▲	fidotron 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> CA is a scandal primarily due to account escalation, I thought. Not about who got elected It quite clearly wasn't, and that's the point, for the simple reason "Account escalation" isn't/wasn't a thing, there were simply no controls on anyone at all, which is why the Cow Clicker game got everything as well. As the parent commenter observed the Obama campaign were being promoted as geniuses for their online ad strategies that worked with information obtained this way. It only became a scandal when the others learned how to do it.

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suburban_strike 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Mostly in the middle and far east. The idea that people bend over backwards to hire criminals as subject matter experts on security is largely a Judaic practice that television perpetuates in spite of reality.

If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you. If you're convicted of hacking in Israel, Unit 8200 will probably send a recruiter. It's a curious practice and I'm not sure where I stand on it.

	▲	smcin 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Compare to how different countries' justice systems treat really high quality money forgers.
	▲	fsckboy 18 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		do you realize that the Israeli population is far far more secular than the US's? the Israeli government is not "Judaic" which would refer to the religion.