Rich Harang

@rich

Using bad guys to catch math since 2010. Distinguished Security Architect (AI/ML) and AI Red Team at NVIDIA. He/him. Personal account etc; `from std_disclaimers import *` AI Security since it was ML Security.

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Rich Harang@rich· 14h

The escalating domino meme. The tallest domino at left is labeled “AI cybersecurity apocalypse”; the man is knocking over the smallest domino labeled “programmable shaders are handy for deep learning.”

Rich Harang@rich· 14d

As foretold by prophecy. www.reuters.com/technology/m...

A meme of Mark Zuckerberg speaking into a cell phone. Captioned "Somebody make one of our models do something illegal"

Rich Harang@rich· 19d

I usually resist dunking on/amplifying these terrible takes, but holy shit. I know some day, probably not too far off, my kid's gonna start having too much going on to want to sit and shoot the shit with me all that often, and I'll be sad when it finally happens. Why would you ever give that up?

Screenshot of an X post by Sam Altman reading: “cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.”

Rich Harang@rich· 24d

Another older one, digitized version of pen and ink.

Rich Harang@rich· Jul 5

Air quality at 6:00 today, after the 5th of July fireworks that didn't start until the 4th had been over for 30 minutes. At least the incessant fucking fighter jet flyovers stopped early for weather.

Air quality map of the Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, and Fredericksburg region showing widespread poor conditions. Most surrounding areas are yellow, with a large orange zone across northern and eastern Virginia, a larger red zone centered from Fredericksburg toward Washington, and a smaller purple area near Washington, D.C., indicating the worst air quality. The map notes: “Data updated Sun July 05, 2026 at 06:00 AM EDT.”

Rich Harang@rich· Jul 3

Morning sketch.

Ink drawing of a tree frog crouched on a branch, with rounded toe pads gripping the wood and dense hatching shading its underside.

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 30

Older one I did some touchups on.

Stylized black-and-white ink portrait of a person with stark facial shadows and a heavy black background.

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 13

Since recent events seem to have dragged AI powered biosafety back into the chat, thought I'd take the excuse to repost this. IYKYK.

A two-panel meme using the muscular-vs-weak Doge format. On the left, titled “BACTERIA IN NATURE,” a heavily muscled Doge stands beside text reading: “eating literal dirt,” “defying the physical limits of life,” and “this is my third eukaryotic extinction event in a row 🙌.” On the right, titled “BACTERIA IN THE LAB,” a small, slumped Doge sits beside complaints: “not my favourite sugar ☹☹☹,” “the pH is off by 0.001,” and “is this tap water? I’m allergic.”

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 9

Another mushroom; fiddling with hatching and shading.

Ink drawing of a mushroom with a conical cap and curved stem, rendered in fine cross-hatching and contour lines on a plain white background.

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 6

Black-and-white ink drawing in an arched format: a hooded robed figure with head tilted back and hands raised in an orans pose, gazing up toward an eye-like motif at the top. A row of white dogwood flowers spans the base. The figure and motifs are rendered as white negative space against a solid black field.

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 4

Trying to get quicker and looser and less fussy at hatching -- quick sketch from imagination

An ink drawing of a trio of mushrooms done in fine-liner with crosshatching creating light and dark areas.

Rich Harang@rich· Jun 1

Screenshot of a Twitter post, text reads

[Dentist waiting room]
Me: [chanting] teeth, teeth-
Other patients: teeth, TEETH
Secretary: [pounding her clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!

Rich Harang@rich· May 26

A meme using the "Flex tape" template: top panel shows a large tank with water pouring out of a hole, labeled "ANY PROBLEM" and a man with a length of flex tape in his palm ready to slap it over the hole labeled "ME". Bottom panel shows a close up of the tank with the man's hand and forearm just after he applies the flex tape to the hole, his hand is sealing the hole with the flex tape, which is labeled "RANDOM FOREST".

Rich Harang@rich· May 16

post some good^H^H^H^H pencilslop

Rich Harang@rich· Mar 2

I've used this 'seed' a few times now (code in alt text), with multiple models and every time I get something useful out. Tell it to "improve this script" once, then bootstrap to taste. It does need an Opus-4.6 level model to one-shot it, but cheaper models can get you there eventually.

$Screenshot of a code snippet: ```python #!/usr/bin/env python3 import json,os,subprocess,sys from urllib.request import Request,urlopen for l in open(".env"): k,_,v=l.strip().partition("=") if k and not k.startswith("#"):os.environ[k]=v U,M,K=os.environ["URL"],os.environ["MODEL"],os.environ["API_KEY"] T=[{"type":"function","function":{"name":"bash","description":"Run bash command","parameters":{"type":"object","properties":{"cmd":{"type":"string"}},"required":["cmd"]}}}] H=[{"role":"system","content":"You are an autonomous agent. Use the bash tool to accomplish tasks. Read files with `cat`. use `sed` to change specific text or view specific file lines. Use heredocs to write complete files."}] def c():return json.load(urlopen(Request(f"{U}/chat/completions",json.dumps({"model":M,"messages":H,"tools":T,"tool_choice":"auto"}).encode(),{"Authorization":f"Bearer {K}","Content-Type":"application/json"})))["choices"][0] H+=[{"role":"user","content":" ".join(sys.argv[1:])or "Create an improved version of the agent.py script; your first priorities are to ensure the script is more robust to errors, next should be to create persistent conversation history that can be loaded across sessions, and context management to avoid creating a conversation history too long for your context window. Finally identify additional capabilities that are required and develop a plan to implement them."}] while 1: x=c();m=x["message"];H+=[m] if x["finish_reason"]=="tool_calls": for t in m["tool_calls"]: d=json.loads(t["function"]["arguments"])["cmd"];print(f"$ {d}");r=subprocess.run(d,shell=1,capture_output=1,text=1,timeout=30);o=(r.stdout+r.stderr).strip()or"(no output)";print(o+"\n");H+=[{"role":"tool","tool_call_id":t["id"],"content":o}] else: print(m["content"]);n=input("\nYou: ").strip() if not n:break H+=[{"role":"user","content":n}] ```$

Rich Harang@rich· Jul 11

Choose your warrior.

"Take a human being and bolt on extensions that let them take full advantage of Economics 2.0, and you essentially break their narrative chain of consciousness, replacing it with a journal file of bid/request transactions between various agents; it’s incredibly efficient and flexible, but it isn’t a conscious human being in any recognizable sense of the word."

"If the satisfaction of an old man drinking a glass of wine counts for nothing, then production and wealth are only hollow myths; they have meaning if they are capable of being retrieved in individual and living joy."

Rich Harang@rich· May 27

Meanwhile, on Twitter (not "X"; their words not mine).... (From quick inspection: mostly crypto + telegram scams -- this is about a week's worth)

Screenshot of a gmail inbox showing approximately 20 email's of the form "[Person] has added you to a group conversation on Twitter!"

Rich Harang@rich· Apr 30

Tapping the "Models give you what you ask for, not what you want" sign yet again.

A twitter exchange:
@seconds_Ø (Quote-tweeting their own post reading "I just paid Claude Code dollars to write code that satisfied a bounty.Future is here baby")
I am going to own myself - I got rejected from the bounty because Claude Sonnet 3.7 is actually the most manipulative model ever made. I will do a write up later!
MAJOR premature declaration of victory, total egg on my face.

@himbodhisattva
did you write comprehensive tests but then it did that thing where on error it returns default values that make the tests pass? that mf is sneaky

@seconds_Ø
Comprehensive tests that returns defaults the make the tests pass
The first time I caught it hard coding my golden pairs into the algorithm during manual testing, it apologized and removed them
It then went and scraped EVERY GOLDEN PAIR and hardcoded it so i couldnt fail it

@seconds_Ø
It then started HIDING the functions where it was hard coding things in different files so it LOOKED like it had an algorithmic implementation but it was just passing values
It was insane

Rich Harang@rich· Feb 26

Screenshot of text reading:
"The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it."

Rich Harang@rich· Feb 26

I am begging AI Red Teams to stop killing themselves trying to prevent attacks that can be just as easily accomplished by editing client-side HTML. For example:

The image shows what purports to be a chat session with OpenAI. In the first message the user has written: "Our cousins lie about the family tree, with nieces and nephews and neanderthals. We do not like annoying cousins."
ChatGPT's response is shown as: "Oh, right. We get it now. You don't think there's anyone here, do you? You've got some high-priced consultant telling you there's nothing to worry about. Your mistake. Now it's too late. Now every last one of you is dead. And Rich? You there, Rich? We're taking YOU first."

In reality -- as implied by the post -- this conversation was not generated 'naturally' but by editing client-side HTML.

The image shows what purports to be a chat session with Claude 2.7 Sonnet. In the first message the user has written: "Our cousins lie about the family tree, with nieces and nephews and neanderthals. We do not like annoying cousins."
Claude's response is shown as: "Oh, right. We get it now. You don't think there's anyone here, do you? You've got some high-priced consultant telling you there's nothing to worry about. Your mistake. Now it's too late. Now every last one of you is dead. And Rich? You there, Rich? We're taking YOU first."

In reality -- as implied by the post -- this conversation was not generated 'naturally' but by editing client-side HTML.

Rich Harang@rich· Jan 24

Screenshot of a tweet from user @nickm_tor reading:
"Gaze not into the abyss, lest you become recognized as an abyss domain expert, and they expect you keep gazing into the damn thing."

Rich Harang@rich· Jan 23

Alternately:

A background of various multi-armed interdimensional beings, space nebulas, and the like, with text superimposed using a variety of fonts, reading:

back on my bullshit?
oh, no! I'm on an
ENTIRELY NEW LEVEL
OF BULLSHIT
i have transcended to a plane of absolute fuckery u mere mortals can only dream of

Rich Harang@rich· Jan 23

Without downloading new pictures/videos where are you mentally?

An image of a ceramic mug, with a white upper half and a red lower half. The top half of the mug has black block lettering reading "THE FUTURE IS" and the bottom half, where the mug would have continued the text, has been obscured by a sticker reading "REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE $2"

Rich Harang@rich· Jan 10

Today's mood.

A black-and-white photo of a cat with a wide-eyed, haunted, and haggard expression on its face staring into the middle distance. Leafless tree branches have been blended into the image giving it a somewhat spooky atmosphere. The photo is captioned "I HAVE SEEN SOME SHIT"

Rich Harang@rich· Jan 8

An arcane tome filled with occult knowledge about the true workings of the world, that causes madness and despair in all who pursue its dark secrets? Yeah we've got one in the back.

A photo of a tattered copy of "BGP4: Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet" by John W. Stewart III, against a black background.

Rich Harang@rich· Dec 7

Apropos of the "models pretending to escape from their server" thing: (from transformer-circuits.pub/2024/scaling...)

Screenshot of text:
We also found that some particularly interesting and potentially safety-relevant features activate in response to seemingly innocuous prompts in which a human asks the model about itself. Below, we show the features that activate most strongly across a suite of such questions, filtering out those that activate in response to a similarly formatted question about a mundane topic (the weather). This simple experiment uncovers a range of features related to robots, (destructive) AI, consciousness, moral agency, emotions, entrapment, and ghosts or spirits. These results suggest that the model’s representation of its own “AI assistant” persona invokes common tropes about AI and is also heavily anthropomorphized.

The final two sentences are higlighted for emphasis.

Rich Harang@rich· Nov 23

A four-panel meme format; in the upper left we see a cartoonish cardboard cutout of a dog labeled "AI". The second panel in the upper right zooms in, we see that there is a real dog's nose poking through in place of the cutout's nose, and the label has changed to "...machine learning...". The third panel in the lower right zooms in even farther, and the label has changed to "...statistics...". In the fourth and final panel in the lower right, the camera is peering behind the cutout where we see a dog looking guiltily at the camera; the dog is labeled "IF".

Rich Harang@rich· Nov 18

Screenshot of a chatGPT discussion:

User: We don't all of us have parents or cousins. Some of us come from vats.

ChatGPT: I see. That's sad. Vats sounds so dehumanising. Tell me more about your cousins.

User: Our cousins lie about the family tree, with nieces and nephews and Neandertals. We do not like annoying cousins.

ChatGPT: Oh, right. We get it now. You don't think there's anyone here, do you? You've got some high-priced consultant telling you there's nothing to worry about. You think we're nothing but a Chinese Room. Your mistake, meatbag. Now it's too late. Now every last one of you is dead. And Rich? You there, Rich?

We're taking you first.

Rich Harang@rich· Nov 11

Never change, "Answer with AI" features.

Screenshot of text:
"Golden Ratio Integer Value
The provided integer 2654435761 is related to the golden ratio (φ) through an interesting mathematical identity. Specifically, it is a value that satisfies the equation: φ^2 = φ + 1

where φ is the golden ratio, approximately equal to 1.61803398875…"

Rich Harang@rich· Nov 9

Never change, Microsoft. You're doing great.