iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Replies

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026

To understand the truth about the Hugging Face hack, you could do a lot worse than to listen to Ed Zitron and Cal Newport's recent podcast conversation on Ed's "Better Offline" podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

podcasts.apple.com

No, AI Is Not "Autonomously Hacking" with Cal Newport

Podcast Episode · Better Offline · August 26 · 1h 5m

321442

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026

Newport does an admirable job of breaking down how these "autonomous hacking" tools work. The first thing to understand is that a chatbot isn't really directing the operation.

315619

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026

Instead, the chatbot serves as a kind of front-end to a database of earlier hacking challenges that is repeatedly queried by a simple program written in Python, an easy-to-master programming language.

11378

dgglynn @dgglynn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

LLM's are static, functionally read only, so don't have a mode of action. LLM's are initiated by human written tools, like a harness or an agent, or a service that manages LLM I/O. Two questions: Where does the "AI" function happen? And where should safety be installed?

000

ThunderboltGo @thunderboltgo.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Yes, a human is responsible, and we best not forget that.

020