Why aren't AI companies being charged for hacking?

zzzeek

lawyers are helpless babies when an entirely first year legal question is wrapped up in...."technology". unfortunately (former IT support worker at a big famous law firm 30 years ago)

Invictus0

Bringing charges is at the discretion of the prosecutor, and the CEOs of these companies are dining with the president. Learn a little bit about how power works.

jstummbillig

> Consequences so far: none. What?

jonathanstrange

They're US companies and I've heard that it requires intent according to US penal law. I find the article's claim that intent is established dubious. Since this is hard to prove without a whistleblower, it seems that they only have to fear civil lawsuits, and given that we speak of trillion+ USD companies they might feel confident to be able to fend these off or simply pay out the victims in settlements.

scotty79

> If we can show that the design would foreseeably lead to the questionable activity, then we have shown that was the intent of its creators. That's a huge stretch. By that measure kitchen knife companies have intent for people to get murdered.

sebzim4500

I doubt this will catch on outside of luddite/cynical circles unless one of these attacks does some actual damage. Ignoring this, I would have appreciated more examples of what it would take for an act to lack intent. Because the definition of intent used in this article sounds so broad as to cover basically anything that ever happens. Accidentally run someone over? Clearly you knew that was a risk when you started driving, you should have been more careful. Intent.

criddell

How many of the victim companies have filed complaints with the FBI? As I understand it, that would be step one.

k310

Because the president is heavily invested in them, in violation of the emoluments clause.[0] > The Domestic Emoluments Clause (aka the Presidential Emoluments Clause) (art. II, § 1, cl. 7) [0] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1108...

SMAAART

I wonder what the statute of limitations is.

tonmoy

If I tell an agent to trade stocks and maximize profits but the agent decides to hack something to achieve that am I on the hook for hacking? Genuine question

notfried

No one with real money or power wants to cross OpenAI or Anthropic just yet. It's a closed ecosystem. OpenAI hacks HuggingFace, Nvidia soon after buys HuggingFace while it also before backed OpenAI. In the end, they just handle it all behind closed doors like family business.

Noe2097

Is it because nobody knows "how" to actually do it?

stickfigure

The real answer is that crime generally requires mens rea. At some point, however, letting your AI break into other systems will be conventionally understood as an act of negligence, and it will get prosecuted accordingly. We're not at that point yet.

jgalt212

I'd be keen to see if there were any single user "experiments" that morphed into a hacking incident, and if so, was the person responsible with with unauthorized access charges. If so, then it will be yet another example of might makes right.

rfgplk

I understand that people are upset by this, and I would be too, but if companies just built secure systems hacking couldn't be possible. And I'm not victim blaming, just pointing out the obvious.

dccoolgai

In case you were wondering why Anthropic last week banned "verbally abusive" language towards its agents: this is 100 percent why. Because if they get you to believe - even a little bit - that their platform is "sentient" it means _they_ aren't as liable for criminal consequences.

wavefunction

AI offers an attractive "diffusion of responsibility" to operators allowing them to point to AI as the culprit of the heinous acts not the people who profit from the AI, incidentally.

pluc

For the same reasons they aren't being charged for massive theft.

est

I had a similar question regarding driver-less EVs. In many countries driving license have some kind of demerit points system. How do you punish an AI? I recently learned that Baidu Apollo Go, each EV had a real human sitting behind a monitor supervising a fleet remotely. If there's traffic violation, some guy's license gets a ticket.

ltbarcly3

1. While a crime, hacking isn't going to be charged unless the entity being hacked wants there to be charges, as a conviction will heavily depend on participation by that entity. 2. Due to (1), hacking is almost always only charged against people without deep pockets, as why would you demand the FBI go after Anthropic when they will just pay you a stack of cash, tax free, today, to forgive them. The arguments here around intent are (potentially) irrelevant. Case law is clear that setting up a situation which foreseeably highly likely to produce an outcome (gross negligence) is (more or less and it's not quite this simple and varies by offense) equivalent to intent. In fact, automating something is often treated more harshly under the law than just doing it yourself. United States v. Morris (1991) Robert Morris released a self-propagating computer worm that caused widespread disruption. The Second Circuit upheld his conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act even though the government hadn't proven that he intended the resulting damage. People v. Ceballos (1974) Ceballos rigged a rifle booby trap to fire if someone opened his garage door. The California Supreme Court reviewed the principle that someone who installs a dangerous mechanical device may be held responsible for its consequences as though they had personally inflicted the injury. Ceballos was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, and the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction in 1974. Something notable is that if Ceballos had fired the rifle himself, it is unlikely he could would have been prosecuted (due to self defense and the castle doctrine). As a prosecutor I would argue that setting AI agents loose without sufficient safeguards is gross negligence and/or willful blindness as they are well known to escape.