Title: Discussion 10 — Flag or Block? Hugging Face's Unsafe-Model Policy
Course: AIINFRA 302: AI Security, Guardrails & Governance > Section: Week 10 — Model Provenance and AI Supply-Chain Security

💬 Discussion 10 — Flag or Block? Hugging Face's Unsafe-Model Policy (20 pts)

Hugging Face runs automated pickle/ModelScan-style scans on uploaded models, but when a model is flagged as potentially unsafe, the hub typically shows a warning badge rather than removing or blocking the model outright — the file usually remains downloadable. Is "flag but allow" the right tradeoff for a large open model hub, or should certain risk signals (e.g., a detected pickle exploit, not just an unusual pattern) trigger a hard block instead? Consider who bears the risk (the hub, the uploader, the downstream developer, the end user), what a hard-block policy would do to legitimate research use cases, and whether your answer changes for a hub used by students and beginners versus one used mainly by security-aware ML engineers. Post your initial response (150+ words) by the midweek deadline, then respond to at least two classmates — ideally at least one classmate who took the opposite position from you.