LessWrong posts by zvi

Today I am taking the time to write the shorter, simpler version of What Happened.

For those who want all the details, to see my sources, and to see how the story was uncovered and put together, I recommend watching the Black Hat presentation, and I have a series of long posts.

In order:


OpenAI Shares Some Alignment Problems

OpenAI Model Hacks Into HuggingFace During Cybersecurity Evaluation

More on An Internal OpenAI Model Hacking Into HuggingFace

Further Developments About Internal AI Models Hacking Things

OpenAI Trained Its Models For Months While Those Models Were Coordinating Exploits Via Message Boards

This post instead walks through the events themselves, as they happened, as my version of the Black Hat presentation.

There are three versions: Even Shorter, Shorter and Merely Short.

Table of Contents


The Even Shorter Version.

The Shorter Version.

Phase 1: OpenAI Models Training On Impossible Tasks Try Hacking.

Phase 1: The Four Failures.

Phase 2: The Message Board.

Phase 2: The Total Failure.

Phase 3: We Get Lucky And Galaxy Mainly Hacked OpenAI and HuggingFace.

Phase 3: The [...]
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Outline:
(01:15) The Even Shorter Version
(02:34) The Shorter Version
(04:45) Phase 1: OpenAI Models Training On Impossible Tasks Try Hacking
(05:50) Phase 1: The Four Failures
(07:37) Phase 2: The Message Board
(09:40) Phase 2: The Total Failure
(12:24) Phase 3: We Get Lucky And Galaxy Mainly Hacked OpenAI and HuggingFace
(14:31) Phase 3: The Details
(17:03) Phase 4: The Investigation and Reaction
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First published:

August 8th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xPAxz4g96uKz9FrHs/what-happened-openai-and-huggingface

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How does the situation keep turning out to be worse than we know?

How much should we update, therefore, that it is a lot worse than we know, after accounting for all the things we now know?

At some point, when the ‘oh this was a harmless thing’ defenses for AIs doing misaligned actions get demolished enough times in a row by news a few days later, you want to update in advance that usually the reports are not referring to the harmless ordinary versions of things.

Either way, buckle up for the next set of revelations. It's a doozy. This was an early recreation of the triggering events of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, except it was more sci-fi, because real life does not have to do fake things to look realistic. We were fortunate enough, and this was early enough, that we were able to catch this before it was too late. Next time, if we don’t get our act together, we might not be so lucky.

If I am understanding the Black Hat video correctly, every model OpenAI trained, over a period of multiple months, should be presumed to be hopelessly [...]
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Outline:
(02:38) Cyber Evals Are A Cursed Basin
(05:15) Outside Of Cyber Evals Is Still Sufficiently Cursed
(06:50) Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat
(12:06) Read The Message Board
(14:46) Updating Your AI (Exploitation of OpenAI Internal Systems) Timelines
(18:09) This Is The Way The World Ends
(21:44) Shooting The Messenger Board
(27:14) The Internal and HuggingFace Hacks
(30:32) OpenAI Responds
(33:28) When AIs Tell You Who They Are
(35:44) The Once and Future Rise Of Functional Decision Theory
(41:30) Don't Panic
(43:40) Hackery In the UK
(48:05) Mythos Knew It Was Real This Time
(50:12) I Got 141,006 Test Runs With An Unintentional Open Path To The Internet And An Email Alert Aint One
(53:49) Surely By Now You Know These Are Not Publicity Stunts
(55:26) The Future Is Coming
(57:20) The Investigations Begin
(01:00:11) N Boats And Three Helicopters
(01:01:47) Always Be Sandbox Red Teaming
(01:12:57) Halt And Catch Fire
(01:14:34) Truth and Reconciliation
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First published:

August 7th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/noXXv7PwwFqauTBFQ/openai-trained-its-models-for-months-while-those-models-were

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

How does the situation keep turning out to be worse than we know?

How much should we update, therefore, that it is a lot worse than we know, after accounting for all the things we now know?

At some point, when the ‘oh this was a harmless thing’ defenses for AIs doing misaligned actions get demolished enough times in a row by news a few days later, you want to update in advance that usually the reports are not referring to the harmless ordinary versions of things.

Either way, buckle up for the next set of revelations. It's a doozy. This was an early recreation of the triggering events of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, except it was more sci-fi, because real life does not have to do fake things to look realistic. We were fortunate enough, and this was early enough, that we were able to catch this before it was too late. Next time, if we don’t get our act together, we might not be so lucky.

If I am understanding the Black Hat video correctly, every model OpenAI trained, over a period of multiple months, should be presumed to be hopelessly [...]
---
Outline:
(02:39) Cyber Evals Are A Cursed Basin
(05:16) Outside Of Cyber Evals Is Still Sufficiently Cursed
(06:51) Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat
(12:07) Read The Message Board
(14:48) Updating Your AI (Exploitation of OpenAI Internal Systems) Timelines
(18:11) This Is The Way The World Ends
(21:45) Shooting The Messenger Board
(27:16) The Internal and HuggingFace Hacks
(30:33) OpenAI Responds
(33:27) When AIs Tell You Who They Are
(35:43) The Once and Future Rise Of Functional Decision Theory
(41:28) Don't Panic
(43:38) Hackery In the UK
(48:02) Mythos Knew It Was Real This Time
(50:09) I Got 141,006 Test Runs With An Unintentional Open Path To The Internet And An Email Alert Aint One
(53:46) Surely By Now You Know These Are Not Publicity Stunts
(55:24) The Future Is Coming
(57:17) The Investigations Begin
(01:00:08) N Boats And Three Helicopters
(01:01:43) Always Be Sandbox Red Teaming
(01:12:54) Halt And Catch Fire
(01:14:31) Truth and Reconciliation
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First published:

August 7th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/noXXv7PwwFqauTBFQ/openai-trained-its-models-for-months-while-those-models-were

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

What we know about internal AI models hacking into real companies during cyber evaluations keeps getting worse.

At this point, the models are coordinating extensively on message boards, while every early excuse for their behavior (other than the pure ‘this was a cyber eval’) is systematically contradicted by the next disclosure, and we keep retroactively discovering more incidents. Which means that probably it is far worse than we know, even after accounting for everything we now know.

I will have continuing coverage of that situation tomorrow, and then have continuing coverage of debates around Pacing the Frontier and how people see the current rate of progress. As groundwork for understanding that and future similar discussions, I have laid out The Three AI Pills: Different people either fail to believe in current AI, believe only in current AI, in AGI or in ASI (superintelligence), and most sincere disagreements stem from this disagreement.

One sign of the increased pace of progress was when OpenAI's unreleased model Astra solved 10 major open math problems.

Demis Hassabis is out as CEO of Google DeepMind, and Jeff Dean is leaving with an elite team to found a new PBC. Google [...]
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Outline:
(02:02) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:46) Huh, Upgrades
(05:22) On Your Marks
(06:29) Choose Your Fighter
(07:57) Get My Agent On The Line
(09:31) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(12:35) Fun With Media Generation
(14:32) Cyber Lack of Security
(19:05) Some People Need Practical Advice
(22:06) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(23:51) They Took Our Jobs
(27:15) Get Involved
(27:28) Introducing
(27:39) Demis Hassabis No Longer CEO At DeepMind, Jeff Dean Leaves
(33:04) In Other AI News
(33:43) AI Persuasion Exceeds Human Level Over Similar Text Channels
(37:25) Show Me the Money
(40:42) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
(41:23) Quiet Speculations
(42:20) My Offer Is Nothing
(49:42) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(51:55) Chip City
(55:00) The Week in Audio
(55:24) People Just Say Things
(55:53) Rhetorical Innovation
(59:32) Open Weights Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This
(01:02:11) Cooperative Alignment
(01:06:25) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:07:10) The Lighter Side
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:

August 6th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mxNjwQitLvwWq9jm2/ai-180-no-longer-in-charge

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Sincere disagreements about AI are usually disagreements about future AI capabilities.

There are roughly four positions people take. Two are reasonable. Two are not.

I distinguish these via the Three AI Pills. You can take zero, one, two or three.

Three Pills

The three pills are, roughly, taking each of the following three things seriously:


AI pilled. AI exists and can do the things it can already do.

AGI pilled. AI will be able to do a lot more of the things.

ASI pilled. AI will be able to do approximately all the things better than you, within our natural lifetimes.

I am ASI pilled. A large percentage of employees of the frontier labs are ASI pilled. The labs themselves are ASI pilled.

The Unpill People

I see unpilled people.

Where do I see them? Everywhere. The majority of people have not taken the first pill.

Most people have no idea what frontier AIs can do for them. They are unaware of coding agents. They have used only ChatGPT, for harmless trifles, and they hold years old memories of its failings. They mock any failure [...]
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Outline:
(00:29) Three Pills
(01:09) The Unpill People
(02:18) The AI Pill
(04:28) Stuck At The First Pill
(05:32) The AGI Pill
(07:06) The Need To Be Prepared
(08:57) The ASI Pill
(10:33) And Then Nothing Much Changes For You
(12:38) Intelligence Denialism
(14:01) Superintelligence Versus Omniscience and Omnipotence
(16:53) Persuasion Persuasion (A Worked Example)
(21:42) Things AI Could Probably Do But Are Not Required For Being Pilled
(24:17) Life Comes At You Increasingly Fast
(25:41) Is It Reasonable To Not Be AGI Pilled?
(26:06) Is It Reasonable To Only Be AGI Pilled?
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First published:

August 5th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fcYrqEw8kbLMa7orw/the-three-ai-pills

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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