Actually, without a need to pay for servers (virtual or other), it offers freedom from sponsors that want the conversation kept profitable and ad friendly.

To me it sounds like a newb wrote a web app and didn't quite know what an API is.

Did it use the API normally or did it do an SQL injection?

It's still a cloud, just one behind a military firewall.

And the AI circumvented them because of bad coding. That part of the story is not at all new.

Or more to the point, why on the open internet? Put it on 10/8 or unallocated IPv6 somewhere and VPN it through the public internet if they must.

That way, if the camera tries to phone home, it won't find a router willing to complete that call.

Banks are supposed to lend money. I just saved them the paperwork.

Of course, AI also sometimes ignores instructions. Like when an AI decided to delete a production database in spite of being told not to touch production.

The AI in the robot, of course. Because some fool granted agency to an AI.

Of course it's extreme. So is committing a crime to sign up for classes at the gym. So is starting a smear campaign to get sloppy patches into an open source project or attempting to fool a judge with fake case law. But those have all happened.

That's EXACTLY why I maintain that AI should NEVER be given agency. Don't allow it to commit code, don't allow it to interact with anyone but the user. For God's sake, don't put it in a robot.

It did hack the Gym's registration system. Perhaps not the deepest or most impressive hack, but it did circumvent the business rules in place. Surely you don't claim that letting random people on the web bounce people off of a waiting list was the intended functioning of the Gym's registration system!?!?

I maintain that the article was NOT overhyped or clickbait. I say that because apparently most people don't realize that an AI agent might randomly decide to break the law as a shortcut when you tell it to do something. They probably think nobody would be incredibly stupid enough to unleash that on an unsuspecting public (they're wrong, of course).

Remember in the X-Files when Mulder spent 24 hours trying and failing to draft an airtight wish for the genie, then ultimately decided it just wasn't feasible? That's apparently required to use an AI with agency safely. Sounds like a bad idea.

You should look up the UK's Angle Grinder Man, hero to everyone unjustly clamped.

This is a job for...SAWZALL MAN!

cue heroic music

Nice, so now... I can sleep well with the confidence that my home directory can will get corrupted and my entire os might become useless just because. And that I'll have no warning about any of it until my entire os catches fire, because there aren't any meaningful logs anywhere.

Here for it.
This is the change we needed.

It is good that LEOs are being held responsible for misusing Flock cameras at least some of the time. But the cameras remain an attractive nuisance. It seems an unfortunate number of cops are seduced by the capability. Of course, we probably only find out about a small number of the most egregious cases of personal misuse. We'll never hear about the "professional" misuses that go unpunished and get papered over with "parallel construction".

Okay, but, and I'm trying to read this charitably... aren't you just verifying the presence of a file in your photo directory?
What about the existence of any given file gives you the provenance you need to prove "reality?"