AI Startup Organization Handling DOD Project gets Hacked

Clarifai a nascent artificial intelligence (AI) company based in New York was handling a project named Maven of the Department-of-Defense, secretly when it noticed a server of its being hijacked.

According to Wired's report, earlier in June 2018, Amy Liu Air Force Captain and erstwhile employee of Clarifai filed one legal suit wherein she condemns the said company of having Russian sources compromise it after which the startup failed in apprising the DOD of the breach in due time. Liu asserts that within days of the hack's discovery, Clarifai sacked her because she asked the business firm towards informing the Pentagon about the incident. Besides, when another erstwhile employee, name not disclosed, was dealing with the hack, he was made to quit Clarifai. Many other employees too quit because of the business firm's work on Maven, which related to drones automatically processing picture shots. Venturebeat.com posted this, June 13, 2018.

According to Wired based on certain incident report, the November hack into Clarifai's server could've compromised all the codes of the company as well as plenty of its client information. Two persons during an interaction with Wired said Clarifai did not inform the Pentagon for long that a server breach had occurred.

In March, reports first came in of Google too working on the Maven project. But recently, the tech giant stated it wouldn't continue its contract of Maven project with DOD in 2019. With that Sundar Pichai CEO of Google declared a ban by his company over using artificial intelligence for developing weapons. Over 4,000 staff members, including Jeff Dean Chief of AI at Google signed letters of negation over creating autonomous weaponry by the company.

The server used for doing research and which was impacted with the bot was reportedly different from the system containing Clarifai clients' details. Incidentally, government clients don't run on Clarifai's system. Despite so the company informed the Pentagon regarding the problem though not immediately.

Two staff members on request were again granted assignment to Maven project. There is reportedly no effort from media or others towards specifying the time of reporting the hack to Clarifai clients or the Pentagon.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/22/2018