A pit in my stomach formed last night in the train as I read Hugging Face’s latest blog post on how its servers got hacked by OpenAI’s models in early July. I had printed out the 23-page report for the ride since service can be spotty underground. Seeing the story laid out in physical form underscored just how outrageous it is. I wondered if the person next to me was peering over my shoulder at my strange, stapled Sci-Fi novel on the first significant autonomous AI hack.
Alongside the Hugging Face report, OpenAI published a few more details in a seven-bullet-point update to its July 21 blog that revealed its models’ involvement in the incident. OpenAI contributed to Hugging Face’s post-mortem, and said it plans to publish more of its side of the story “in the coming weeks” after completing a thorough internal review. OpenAI faces significant pressure to do so from security researchers, executives, and, well, just about everyone in the AI industry to share learnings and ensure the proper guardrails are in place going forward.
How OpenAI’s technology escaped a sandbox and hacked into another company is a remarkable story, and one in which the details are still coming in piecemeal. But here’s what we know so far and what we’re still waiting to find out.
