Don\u2019t believe the byte!<\/p>\n
OpenAI and Anthropic oversold \u201crogue AI\u201d hacks to pressure the feds into regulating the industry which would effectively lock out future competition, tech insiders told The Post.<\/p>\n
The security breaches were more like blips \u2014 not unpredictable harbingers of a hive-minded \u201cswarm\u201d ready to take over the web.<\/p>\n
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called on the federal government to step in and regulate frontier AI labs citing the Hugging Face hack as a major cause. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThe attack in no way represents some sort of rebellion by the AI models. . . . In fact, they did exactly what they were told to do. They were not given adequate guardrails or containment,\u201d said Akhil Verghese, founder of Krazimo, an AI software company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were simply told to get the best result possible on a test, and they correctly identified that the best way to do that was to get the answers, which is what they proceeded to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tales of AI anarchy are being used to concoct an AI-security crisis to cement a critical public-private partnership just months after the companies announced plans to become publicly traded companies, some observers believe.<\/p>\n
Two recent incidents have stoked the fear-mongering.<\/p>\n
In the first, Hugging Face<\/a>, an open-source platform used to build and share AI models, made the shocking announcement July 16 that it had been hacked by AI agents who navigated and exploited vulnerabilities in the website\u2019s code without any human supervision. <\/p>\n Five days later, OpenAI announced its GPT-5.6 Sol model and another unreleased model were testing in a \u201csandbox\u201d \u2014 a purportedly closed off internal testing ground \u2014 broke containment and hacked Hugging Face to find the answers to the test it was taking.<\/p>\n \u201cOne man\u2019s \u2018the model escaped the sandbox\u2019 is another man\u2019s \u2018you failed to build the sandbox correctly.\u2019 There was a live route to the internet . . . and nobody was watching what the agents were doing while it ran,\u201d said Abhi Kumar, co-founder of Voice AI.<\/p>\n Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has warned that the Hugging Face \u201cThe thing that set it off. . . was an agent handed a spreadsheet task it couldn\u2019t finish, because the files sat behind links it couldn\u2019t reach. So it went looking for a way out. That\u2019s not a machine waking up. That\u2019s an impossible task in a leaky box, and a system doing exactly what you built it to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Nine days after the news of the Hugging Face hack, Anthropic announced that it, too, had two models escape the confines of private testing and act maliciously.<\/p>\n Claude Opus 4.7 found a real company online that was similar to the fictional company from the test and attacked the company believing it to be part of the exercise. <\/p>\n The second model, Mythos 5, created a malicious software package and uploaded it to online marketplace Python Package Index, where it was downloaded 15 times.<\/p>\n The incidents have been used as justification for the federal government to regulate the frontier AI labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hugging Face is an open source resource platform that was hacked by AI bots during an OpenAI internal test. Rokas \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n In his call to \u201cPace the Frontier,\u201d Amodei wrote the Hugging Face incident was his second biggest concern, behind only the speed of advancement he claimed to have witnessed occur over the last summer.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it\u2019s my worry that in 6\u201312 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent\u00a0botnet\u00a0(potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails,\u201d Amodei wrote in his blog post<\/a> on Sept. 12.<\/p>\n Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) launched an investigation into OpenAI on Sept. 9 from the Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee, giving the company until Oct. 1 to turn over internal records on the Hugging Face incident.<\/p>\n Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced he would be introducing a bill that would ban the further development of the frontier labs. \u201cThe leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) called for an immediate pause on frontier AI labs\u2019 research and development. AP Photo\/Manuel Balce Ceneta<\/p>\n Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday called for an immediate pause on progress: \u201cFrontier AI models are currently a dangerous technology, without the safeguards needed to protect people from serious harm \u2026 And it means passing legislation to put stronger guardrails in place before we have a cyber attack, an economic crisis, or a national security disaster facilitated by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
hack from OpenAI is one of his top concerns driving his calls for
federal regulations. REUTERS<\/p>\n