this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Cybersecurity
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Clickbait title. It's just LLMs doing what they're designed to do. Since they're basically complex iterative algorithms, the person in question did a thing using a tool they didn't fully understand, and that had consequences.
People should be looking at LLMs like Monkey Paws instead of "assistants."
Saying the person didn't understand what they were doing is quite a mischaracterization. That said, they absolutely knew the risks they were taking and are using this story for free advertising.
Still neat to think about though.
Emphasis mine, because anyone who does this might as well let a toddler bash the keyboard. The toddler will most likely just break the keyboard, instead of the whole machine.
Notice that I didn't say they didn't know what they were doing. I said they didn't fully understand what they were doing. I doubt they set out with the goal of letting an LLM run amok and fuck things up.
I do QA for a living, and even when we do trial and error, we have mitigation plans in place for when things go wrong. The fact that they're a CEO of Redwood Research doesn't mean they did their homework on the model they trained.
Still, I agree that it's interesting that it did that stuff at all. It would be nice if they went into more depth as to why it did those things, since they mention that it's a custom model using Claude.