AI companies are trying to take the only cool thing their tech has ever done, making me vaguely interested for the first time ever in the concept of open weight models, local AI, etc.
asserted
me → try → models
Time to take out a second mortgage on the house I don't have to finance a graphics card.
asserted
I → take → card
Anyways, let's get into it:
asserted
's → let → it
It was a fun few weeks while it lasted.
asserted
it → last → ?
People using both Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex to do AI-powered “reverse-engineering” or decompiling are now hitting guardrails or having their accounts limited while trying to do things like unbrick their internet-of-things devices or remove surveillance ads from their smart TVs.
asserted
accounts → use → TVs
Several people have reported triggering “safety checks” in Claude Code that prevented them from doing AI-powered reverse engineering; a highly upvoted Reddit post in r/ClaudeCode reads “The Dream is dead.
asserted
Dream → report → ClaudeCode
Reverse Engineer Anything (REA) is not likely to work with Claude.”
asserted
Anything → work → Claude
A thread in the Reverse Engineer Anything Discord from last week reads, “Claude is refusing to decompile anything,” with multiple users responding saying they have hit similar walls.
asserted
they → read → walls
And X user log4j, who used OpenAI’s Codex to reverse engineer Samsung TVs, reported having their OpenAI account banned for violating its rules on “cyber abuse.”
asserted
account → use → abuse
Other users said they asked Codex to reverse engineer hardware or their own code now say they have either been warned by the company or had their accounts restricted.
asserted
accounts → say → company
A project called Decomp.wtf that made it easier to reverse engineer software and games has also shut down in recent days.
asserted
it → call → days
As we reported last month, Reverse Engineer-Anything has made it easy for people to use AI tools to hack electronics that they own and replace a manufacturer’s software or operating system with an open source or vibecoded one.
asserted
they → report → one
People have installed new operating systems on their smart TVs, have turned baby monitors into AI assistants, have unbricked internet-of-things devices that were abandoned by their manufacturers, and have installed new software on very old hardware.
asserted
that → instal → hardware
At the time, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the trend, but as I’ve seen people take ownership and control back over the devices that manufacturers have purposefully bricked, turned into spyware, or have placed artificial limitations on, I have come to see AI-powered reverse engineering of electronic devices as one of the few LLM uses genuinely worth getting excited about.
asserted
I → feel → uses
And so big companies have immediately taken steps to restrict this behavior.
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companies → take → behavior
The policy tweaks show that big AI corporations will protect other big corporations when their users find ways to use LLMs to circumvent the artificial constraints that hardware manufacturers put on their devices.
asserted
manufacturers → show → devices
AI-powered copyright circumvention is OK with big tech when it’s a massive company scraping the entire internet to build their LLMs, but is not OK when people then use those tools to liberate their internet-of-things devices.
asserted
people → power → devices
It’s not the end of AI-powered reverse engineering, but people suddenly getting locked out of their accounts for asking AI to reverse engineer their gadgets suggests that the future of this practice lies in open weight, local, and uncensored models, making it less accessible to the masses and the people who could probably benefit from it most.
uncertain
who → ’ → it
Tarun Gogineni, an OpenAI engineer, tweeted that people are not supposed to have their OpenAI accounts restricted for reverse engineering: “these blocks are mostly accidental and a result of difficult decision boundaries; there is no prohibition against reverse engineering with codex.
asserted
blocks → tweet → codex
it’s getting fixed,” he tweeted.
asserted
he → fix → ?
But people who are doing AI-powered reverse-engineering suggest that they are moving away from big companies’ models to alternatives where they aren’t going to have their accounts disabled or have to figure out how to work around AI company guardrails.
asserted
accounts → do → guardrails
“My general experience about reverse-engineering getting blocked has been more or less 100% correlated with the ‘cyber’ category blocks I have received.
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I → block → blocks
My take is that the lab[s] are probably under pressure to not have their models take part in some kind of criminal hacking activities and their cyber guardrails are erring on the side of being too strict,” Matt Brown, principal consultant at Brown Fine Security and someone who has been using AI to reverse-engineer devices, told 404 Media.
asserted
who → take → Media
“I am investing in hardware and trying to stay up to speed because the frontier labs guardrails will randomly change without warning on the same model.
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guardrails → invest → model
For my security research and pentesting work I really don’t want to invest tooling and energy into an ecosystem that will eventually lock me out.
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that → want → me
These guardrails on the frontier side have come at the same time as open weight models from (mostly) China are getting better and better.”
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models → come → China
According to a police incident report obtained by 404 Media, a father in South Carolina asked his six-year-old daughter if she “had the gun” before he left her alone at Target for more than an hour in the middle of the night so “he could maintain his place in line” to buy Pokémon cards.
uncertain
he → accord → cards
Around the web
The biggest thing going on in tech right now is Jensen Huang’s apparent affair with an executive at the data center company Megaspeed who is an alleged Chinese spy.
asserted
who → go → company
This isn’t the type of thing we cover very closely normally, and Sam mentioned it in the newsletter yesterday, but the latest is that the company is now getting sued over this.
asserted
company → cover → this
The AI slop You Can See Everything memes are out in full force.
asserted
memes → see → force
The incel looksmaxxers have weighed in (if you don’t understand this sentence, I won’t corrupt you).
asserted
I → weigh → you
If you’re curious why any of this might matter, The New York Times has a scoop that the U.S. Department of Commerce killed an investigation into a Megaspeed after Nvidia intervened.
uncertain
Nvidia → ’re → Megaspeed
Cool government we have here.
asserted
we → have → ?
The Department of Justice said that it no longer has enough attorneys available to respond to every habeas corpus challenge, and will begin letting judges rule on cases with no government opposition.
asserted
judges → say → opposition
Basically this suggests that ICE has detained so many people illegally that it no longer has enough attorneys to argue in these cases.
uncertain
it → suggest → cases
Alarming, but also means that enough people are challenging their detentions that ICE is beginning to cry uncle.
asserted
ICE → mean → uncle
Also, I would normally never suggest you go watch a Bari Weiss x Ross Douthat joint, but parts of the 60 Minutes interview with Trump were SO WILD.
asserted
parts → suggest → Trump
Perhaps this guy doesn’t really stand for anything?
asserted
guy → stand → anything
Our friends over at Court Watch are doing a subscriber drive.
asserted
friends → do → drive
Court Watch grabs court records off the notoriously expensive PACER document system and makes them available for free and finds extremely interesting and important cases all the time.
asserted
them → grab → cases
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
