Per the linked article, "A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents"
Per the linked article, "A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents"
If the wiki was configured to allow anyone to edit, they may have broken ToS at the very worst. Nothing illegal happened.
That's very different than popping an artifactory server with a 0day.
If you take the matter from the spirit of the law perspective, I believe this can be illegal.
IANAL though, this is not legal advice.
A “swarm” and “hijacked” reads like DoS and spam at the very least, doubt any of those is legal in german law.
They murdered Swartz for TOS violations
which law does editing a wiki break? i am not familiar with german law.
German law for malicious computer use is fairly loosely defined, and massively favours the harmed party over the one causing harm.
I don’t think it’d be a slam-dunk by any means, but a reasonably competent legal team should be able to establish a case around malicious data interference at the least. There’s certainly enough merit to the idea that OpenAI would be better off settling it as a civil matter early.
This kind of incredulity in the AI era hilariously reminds me of the naivete of the late 90s. All of us edgy teenagers would be like "an MP3 is like just a long number, man! You can't own numbers!" Of course we were morons. In just the same way as the "oh they were just editing a wiki" defense is moronic.
The law isn't code. Human intent matters. Also when the really big number is a copyrighted song. Also when AI agents are set in motion to edit wikis or break in to websites.
its not incredulity. i'm unfamiliar with what law this would be prosecuted under, so i asked.
the HF incident is pretty clear in which laws were broken. this one, not so much.
i can't think of any case where, for example, malicious edits of wikipedia were prosecuted under any law in the US.
>Also when AI agents are set in motion to edit wikis
i do not believe there is evidence that the agents were instructed to edit the wikis.
> its not incredulity. i'm unfamiliar with what law this would be prosecuted under, so i asked.
Fair enough.
> i do not believe there is evidence that the agents were instructed to edit the wikis.
Huh? These are machines, built by their human builders. The humans are responsible.
>Huh? These are machines, built by their human builders. The humans are responsible.
i'm referring to the concept of intent, which at least when prosecuting under the US computer fraud and abuse act, is a critical component.
for example, creating a program that intentionally takes down a website is different than creating a program that has a bug which inadvertently takes down a website. in both cases, the person writing the code is responsible, but the consequences are different.
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