> Hacking is illegal

I am not a lawyer, but I seriously doubt the feds could win a CFAA conviction on the Hugging Face fact pattern, even if they wanted to charge it.

CFAA has specific intent requirements, and unlike some laws, negligence does not suffice. The agents can not have legally cognizable intent and it’s unlikely there’s anyone at OpenAI who intended for the hacking to happen (if there was, the case is easy).

Existing laws don’t contemplate AI agents that have independent goals. We need new ones, the existing laws are not remotely sufficient.

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sscaryterry 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The existing laws are more than adequate.

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semiquaver an hour ago | parent [-]

I gave an example of why they are not.

Could you explain what your legal strategy would be to overcome the intent requirement of the CFAA? If openAI didn’t intend to hack anything and agents can’t intend to do anything at all, and the CFAA doesn’t permit negligence to stand in for intent, seems to me like the existing law does not cover the situation everyone keeps saying it does.

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sscaryterry an hour ago | parent [-]

Requiring intent is very specific to your jurisdiction, many, if not most other jurisdictions do not require intent.

In the UK, any form of unauthorised access may be prosecuted.

	▲	semiquaver 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No, the UK’s equivalent law specifically requires human knowledge and intent: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3 (see 1b.)

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lenerdenator an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> independent goals

AI does not have goals. These are statistical models of language patterns that people shape into different tools, and that people direct to do things. If I fire up an OpenAI prompt, and enter no input, it is not going to do anything.

No, someone at OpenAI is running the model with some sort of prompt and allowing it to just follow the numbers to do whatever it wants, up to and including breach of government computer systems.

Whether that means anything to the CFAA prosecution, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, but the use of language treating these agents like they're something other than tools at the direction of humans is bad.

It's more like me firing off a rifle into the air on the Fourth of July with no regard for where the bullet lands. I knew that it must come down somewhere, but fired anyways.

I don't really see the harm in charging someone under the CFAA. Let's see if a jury agrees with the charge or not. If not, write new laws.