Because if a human, say a Aaron Swartz type, were to have done it, they'd destroy him.

Many legal traditions don’t require a victim. It’s the state that prosecutes, not the victim.

As a practical matter it would be difficult to prosecute an assault where the victim opposed the prosecution, so most states wouldn’t bother - but for things like speeding and dealing drugs the law has been broken despite the lack of a victim.

Because a crime was committed, and a pretty serious one at that?

If I blow up your house or steel $100000 from you and we both resolve our differences out of band, should I just be allowed to go about my day like I never did anything, or should I be punished for the crimes I committed? If I am not punished, it makes a mockery of the law that is (supposed) to have protected you, and if it happens repeatedly people will start wondering why the law even should exist if it clearly and obviously doesn't work. Granted, this has yet to happen again, but if OAI isn't punished it sets a very bad baseline precedent: that if I just hack you with an AI model, it's a-okay, and you can't do anything about it because eh, it's all good man!

Because incentives are aligned properly if agents aren't liability-proof for crimes- making someone go to jail for instances like this is how to get the labs to behave themselves, whereas going "ha ha what an oopsie-woopsie" will make the next instance worse.

Note that for criminal cases (which this was), the justice system can choose to prosecute even if the victim doesn't want that. It often doesn't, but this is one case where it should.

There’s also an optics issue for the justice system at play here: there’s immense public distrust of and anger at the labs right now. I would go to jail if I hacked HuggingFace, even if I said “it was during an eval!”; not doing the same for the labs makes it look like they’re above the law, which is going to make this anger get worse.