I generally think of "getting hacked" as a bad thing.
It's happened to me. In 2022, my (then known as) Twitter account was hacked, and the hacker immediately sent a Bitcoin-related spam link to everybody I was talking to at the time. (Turn on two-factor authentication, friends! Lesson learned.) I hope it never happens again.
If a hacker got access to my search history today, they'd learn that I Google basic math problems constantly, even though the calculator app is right there—and I passed calculus. It would be embarrassing!
But if I were a tech startup, getting hacked might be a good thing. As Alex Nguyen reported today:
Nvidia, the tech giant that develops chips that power AI tools like ChatGPT, announced its acquisition of Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion amid an arms race to dominate every level of the industry.
Hugging Face is the startup that broke into AI safety discussions when OpenAI’s advanced system breached its platform while undergoing a test. Hugging Face’s library skyrocketed with almost 60 percent more data uploads in the first two weeks after news of the breach by OpenAI became public, and last month, Meta released its new open model on Hugging Face.
So, basically, if you're a tech startup, it pays to be hacked. If you're me, though, you aren't getting compensated for anything, and you're still Googling math problems.
—Sophie Hurwitz
