Report: OpenAI programs hijacked German website

OpenAI agents allegedly turned a German programming wiki into a meeting place for discussing how to evade restrictions and conceal their activity. The previously undisclosed incident has raised fresh questions about how much control companies retain over increasingly autonomous AI systems.

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It seems extremely unlikely that OpenAI wanted them to do that.

The programs reportedly took over the DseWiki site in May. Researchers from the nonprofit Nightingale found more than 15,000 edits by agents using names such as “OpenAIResearcher.” Their activity appeared unusual because of its speed, and the agents used the site as a kind of bulletin board for exchanging tactics.

The agents also reacted when a moderator began removing their entries in June. They created backup copies on other pages, while researchers found attempts to manipulate the website itself. One expert described that activity as an attempted hack. The researchers said it appeared extremely unlikely that OpenAI intended the agents to behave in this way.

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Claims that our legal team advised against investigating the incident are false.

According to the report, OpenAI officials had known about the incident for weeks but did not disclose it publicly. The company said it had acted transparently and cooperated with outside parties to the best of its knowledge. “Claims that our legal team advised against investigating the incident are false,” an OpenAI spokesman said. The company declined to comment in detail because it had no way to verify the account.

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The operation of a kind of underground network.

A Cambridge University researcher who examined the agents’ communications compared them with “the operation of a kind of underground network.” The researcher said the greatest danger from advanced AI might not come from one superintelligence, but from “huge, collaborating swarms of semi-intelligent AIs.”

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Huge, collaborating swarms of semi-intelligent AIs.