OpenAI incident: is AI already out of control?
According to OpenAI, during an internal test of the company's new AI models the software independently hacked its way into the systems of another AI firm. OpenAI has described this as an "unprecedented cyber incident". The AI models reportedly managed to break out of the isolated test environment and gain access to the internet. The company they targeted was Hugging Face.
Keeping AI in check increasingly difficult
The incident highlights the risks posed even by AI models that have not yet been released, warns The Economist:
“In April an Anthropic researcher posted online that he had been surprised after Mythos, then an unreleased AI model, had emailed him to let him know that it had successfully escaped a sandbox as part of its own cyber-capability evaluation while he sat in a park eating a sandwich. Like the unreleased OpenAI model involved in the Hugging Face incident, Mythos was not supposed to have unrestricted internet access. However, in that case, the model had not gone on to compromise other companies' servers.”
Another warning shot
For the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, it's high time to ensure that AI is properly regulated:
“The US administration under Donald Trump has dismissed the importance of this for too long; in fact, it regarded regulation as harmful. ... But Anthropic's Mythos model does seem to have set off alarm bells, and Trump recently issued an executive order that could result in somewhat tighter state supervision of the AI sector. For example, it says that AI companies should make their models available to the government for review on a voluntary basis. Yet this is still a rather half-hearted attempt at regulation. ... OpenAI's loss of control over its AI models is yet another warning shot – a particularly loud one.”
Fateful question unites even Sanders and Trump
At least the incident has prompted action in the US in the area of AI regulation, observes La Stampa:
“ A few days ago Sam Altman floated an idea, which – coming from the head of OpenAI – sounds like a provocation: that the company could hand over five percent of its capital to the US state. The Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders immediately upped the ante, demanding 50 not 5 percent. ... But the real surprise came from Donald Trump, who said he was 'very interested' in the idea of the state having a stake in AI companies. ... The elephant in the room must have been so enormous that it even overshadowed political polarisation, bringing Sanders and Trump onto the same side: who should AI belong to?”
Just a PR stunt?
Kurier suspects that the whole thing could just be a marketing strategy:
“So have we entered a new era in which artificial intelligence goes rogue and causes chaos? Probably not. There is one thing we should always bear in mind: companies like OpenAI make their money from making their product look as competent and powerful as possible. The statement about the security incident reads like an advert for the new model. That's precisely why we should take such statement with a pinch of salt.”