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GPT 5.5 biosafety bounty

43 points

by Murfalo

2 hours ago

| past

| 17 comments

| openai.com

| HN

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puppystench

14 minutes ago

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They ran a bounty on Kaggle last year but with $500k in payouts and with all results open and publishable.

https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/openai-gpt-oss-20b-red-t...

With only $25k in payouts and everything locked down under NDA, I can't imagine many people will participate. Well, other than those submitting mountains of LLM-generated junk.

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dist-epoch

2 minutes ago

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This model is much more powerful than gpt-oss-20b, notice how the contest was not even for the 120b model. Also, bio was not a subject.

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abujazar

38 minutes ago

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This looks like some kind of marketing. Also, the equivalent of spec work. The NDA/secrecy also means any time spent on this is completely meaningless to the participants unless they win the lottery, because results can't be published.

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altcognito

4 minutes ago

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Billions upon billions going to these companies.

25k reward from a selected group of people if you help us determine whether or not someone can use our tool to generate weapons of mass destruction.

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dwa3592

51 minutes ago

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Where are the questions that are supposed to be answered? Would those be shared after an application has been accepted? If yes, why is the application asking for a proposed approach for the jailbreak if we don't know the questions in the first place?

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sva_

49 minutes ago

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> We will extend invitations to a vetted list of trusted bio red-teamers

Had to chuckle. This sounds like a rather exclusive group?

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applfanboysbgon

59 minutes ago

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> $25,000 to the first true universal jailbreak to clear all five questions.

This program is a complete scam. Even if 100 people find "bugs", they will only pay out to one person.

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Lucasoato

57 minutes ago

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Well, that depends on how you set up the bounty program. What if I find a solution, share it to a friend so that both of us can claim the prize?

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skeeter2020

51 minutes ago

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bug bounty programs have never paid out independent disclosure for the same bug though; they might split or even pay-out larger coordinated efforts. It's largely a first place award only.

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ImPostingOnHN

51 minutes ago

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assume there exists 2+ different bugs

after the 1st bug is found, no payout for any other of the bugs

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skeeter2020

53 minutes ago

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that's not the point even. They are attempting to build credibility in two ways: 1. this model is SO advanced that there are huge risks, never before considered. 2. we're doing the super-responsible thing in incentivizing work that addresses this. #1 is unproven and frankly, unlikely, which makes #2 meaningless. The fact that the "prize" is so low & structured this was suggests that they're not that concerned but do think it's likely that a bunch of people will find things. If they truly thought their model was so good they would be confident issues would be both rare and very critical, then offer huge rewards with no limits because they'd be much more confident no one would claim it.

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applfanboysbgon

51 minutes ago

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Yes, I was about to edit in that I think this is simply a media/PR stunt before I got so many replies so quickly. They get bonus points because the structure is so insulting that it may not engender many serious participants, in which case it may go unbroken, in which case they can go to the media and proclaim "look, we offered a reward, but nobody broke it! Our model is objectively the safest in the world!".

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mmsc

57 minutes ago

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How is that a scam? You don't get participation awards for solving half of a puzzle...

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applfanboysbgon

55 minutes ago

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I didn't say anything about partial solutions. The puzzle can have multiple full solutions. Or does the software you write only have exactly one bug? If so, that's impressive, in multiple ways, including the fact that you're able to identify that there's exactly one bug but not what the bug is and fix it.

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mellosouls

41 minutes ago

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If anybody is wondering what bio-bugs are, I had a heck of a time getting CG to (finally) tell me it's where the user can get it to guide them in doing things like constructing things that are hazardous in the domain of biology.

Eg you can get answers about what ricin is but not how to weaponise it. Actionable stuff they shouldn't be able to legally/ethically action.

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codeulike

32 minutes ago

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This is to match what Anthropic said they already did with Mythos on the (200 page) Mythos system card

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unethical_ban

13 minutes ago

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* Highly unlikely to win

* Relatively paltry reward

* NDA on findings

This is functionally equivalent to an internship where the reward is the experience, and the resume building, but you can't talk about what you did.

All for a company that is getting tens of billions of dollars in deals from the largest tech companies in the world.

I suppose the hope is that there are job offers somewhere along the line.

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lxgr

9 minutes ago

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Ah, now I understand why all my chats are getting flagged for biosafety issues these days. (I asked it to create an illustration about gene drives for a high school level audience once.)

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tiberriver256

36 minutes ago

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Codex desktop app is barely usable... The perf issues are left to languish in their backlog

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zb3

42 minutes ago

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What a farce, these questions are not even public and most likely will never be. You can't even participate if you're not "trusted" I guess.

So this is just a PR post, not that I even think the "biosafety" makes any sense but still.

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gib444

24 minutes ago

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How did the dupe detector miss https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47879102 ?

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shevy-java

48 minutes ago

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"Accepted applicants and collaborators must have existing ChatGPT accounts to apply, and will sign a NDA."

Ah, good old NDA. Always buying silence. That's why I don't participate in any such "bounty" programs. Signing a NDA is like signing with the devil. You restrict what people are allowed to discuss. I had that happen before - when you sign a NDA you basically submit yourself into silence. Imagine journalists being stifled by NDAs.

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dakiol

42 minutes ago

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$25K. Really? They make $65 million a day, so they pay you what they earn in about 33 seconds for a critical vulnerability. WTF

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zacharycohn

25 minutes ago

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Well they lose $100M a day, so...

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gosub100

38 minutes ago

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Check with the dark net markets first before claiming the bounty. Remember, this company has 0.0 fucks to give about the impact of their tech on employment, artists, or use in committing fraud, as long as number-go-up they are happy. Your actions should match theirs.

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its-summertime

44 minutes ago

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This is just free / severely-underpaid-on-average labor. Very disgusting.

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mrcwinn

42 minutes ago

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Ah yes, “free” as in “paid.” Certainly you’re welcome to not participate.

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applfanboysbgon

38 minutes ago

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Free as in "free" for >99% of participants, even successful ones, because they will have hundreds or thousands of participants but will only pay out to one of them no matter how many vulnerabilities are found.

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its-summertime

38 minutes ago

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Depending on industry, that payout can be less than a security audit. You only get a chance of getting paid. You don't even know if they gave the LLM the answers that you are supposed to recover.