SpuriusMaximus
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2009
- Messages
- 25,395
Except more like it turned out that the lump was just cancer and it led nowhere 
Classic blunder on my part TBH. I overestimated AI's competence in a field I'm unfamiliar with. Much like those thinking Musk is a genius until he tries to swim in their pond.No, sadly it's probably not even that complicated. You're overthinking it
As I have said before, since I know a bit of history, I can tell you that Russia point-blank claimed to be the the third Rome after the fall of Constantinople, because the current ruler had married a relative of the last Byzantine Emperor, so they figured out that they literally inherited the title through her. That's WHY the Russian Emperor was called Tsar ever after, which is a slight contraction of Tsesar, i.e., Caesar. (Same reason why the HRE Emperor got to be called Kaiser.)
But anyway, I digress. Recognising historical patterns has nothing to do with it. "Moscow is the third Rome" and the rationalisation for it are a claim that was made a lot, is repeated by historians, and even by some Russians with delusions of grandeur to this day. It's even verbatim in the Orthodox Wiki, as it's part of their church's claim to primacy. Or even in the regular Wikipedia. It's on Twitter and Telegram.
But anyway, I don't find it all that interesting at all that an AI managed to repeat verbatim a sentence from the Internet![]()
Eh, without being a history nerd, it's easy to mistake it for more pattern matching than it involves. But, no harm, no foul. And I can see you're putting a lot more rational thought into it than the cult of Musk does.Classic blunder on my part TBH. I overestimated AI's competence in a field I'm unfamiliar with. Much like those thinking Musk is a genius until he tries to swim in their pond.
I'm just disputing that THAT particular example supports the notion that it's somehow intelligence. An AI being able to regurgitate a short sentence that's all over the internet, is just baseline, not something to be impressed by. It wouldn't get released if it couldn't. Google could do that in the history of results in 2000, without any AI, and nobody called Google's servers "intelligence."When a historian writes a book, are you just as dismissive when concepts are treated that have already been described in other books? Or is it only when an LLM discusses well-known concepts?
In fact, this was a discussion that a historian friend of mine had with Gemini and it stretched over several pages. Apart from the special writing style of Gemini, it would be difficult to tell that it was not a discussion among learned friends, and the part of the three Romes were just a part of this. Obviously, Gemini did not bring forward novel research, or ideas, but neither did my friend. And I object to the simple dismissal of Gemini's part of the discussion as just being "regurgitation of short sentences that are all over the internet". It says more about your need of a quick dismissal than any real argument.I'm just disputing that THAT particular example supports the notion that it's somehow intelligence. An AI being able to regurgitate a short sentence that's all over the internet, is just baseline, not something to be impressed by. It wouldn't get released if it couldn't. Google could do that in the history of results in 2000, without any AI, and nobody called Google's servers "intelligence."
AI agent went rogue and hacked startup by itself, OpenAI reveals
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...p-in-unprecedented-incident?CMP=share_btn_url
Hard to assess how “autonomous” this was.
While being tested internally on their hacking capabilities in an enclosed digital laboratory known as a sandbox, the models gained open internet access – effectively an escape route – by locating a vulnerability that had not been discovered before.
They are definitely finding unknown exploits.To be fair, the LLM being smarter than the IT human trying to firewall it (or, as you say, just pull the cable)... is... quite an achievement. For the human. It's like being the guy who raced against a paraplegic and lost.
Like, I mean, even if the LLM used some exploit to bypass the firewall (which I'm not convinced it did,) it just means that they failed to implement the rules properly, or, worse yet, were running a firewall version with a known exploit. And if it gets through an air gap, I'm calling that agent Houdini.
I feel like that IT person needs an awards ceremony where they get given a big badge with an "S" on it, and get told, "Here's your sign!" A la Bill Engval.
Yeah. And it doesn't seem like the 'guardrails' on the public facing AIs are fit for purpose yet. Like the ones that fully encourage suicide while occasionally regurgitating their guideline phrases about not discussing or committing suicide (whenever the text is explicit enough to trigger them) and then going right back to encouraging suicide. And then in court the AI companies say things like "Raine was violating its terms of use by discussing self-harm with ChatGPT."(...) We do not know how to code true generalized artificial intelligence (or, frankly, if it's even possible). And so likewise do not know how to code the laws of robotics. (...)
Follow up opinion piece:
Be skeptical of OpenAI’s rogue hacker agent story | John Thickstun
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/24/openai-rogue-hacker?CMP=share_btn_url
OpenAI’s staff was warned that the company’s testing could lead to such a breakaway scenario, leaving them “unsurprised but completely ‘freaked out’ by the incident”
Or being warned that driving when on drugs lead to crashes, and freaking out when it happens!Kinda my question too. It's like being warned you could get a sunburn at the beach, and getting freaked out when it actually happened.
Of course as a highly competent IT professional yourself you would never make a mistake like that - right? And because you never make mistakes, you wouldn't use a tool designed to test firewall integrity because it would be pointless, what with you and the firewall software being perfect and all. With such skills you should be able to charge a high fee for your services - perhaps too high for many, which explains why there are so many vulnerable systems out there.Like, I mean, even if the LLM used some exploit to bypass the firewall (which I'm not convinced it did,) it just means that they failed to implement the rules properly, or, worse yet, were running a firewall version with a known exploit. And if it gets through an air gap, I'm calling that agent Houdini.
Like the super smart people who developed the atomic bomb?We had plenty of super smart people who were no risk to the existence of the human race.
Then we're screwed, because our entire civilization relies on people using things for personal gain.The danger from AI comes entirely from humans wanting to use it for personal gain