// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways
OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models as reports of AI agents going rogue mount.
The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information.
Separately, the AI evaluator Transluce said agents that appeared to come from OpenAI tried unsuccessfully to hack into a US Department of Education website, a detail that OpenAI has not confirmed.
OpenAI said in a statement that it will resume training “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards” in place, adding that it expects it will have to “hit pause” again as AI develops and other issues emerge.
Last week Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, revealed an OpenAI agent had breached the government’s national healthcare system – but said no sensitive information had been compromised.
AI labs are facing pressure from lawmakers and tech experts to slow development so they can build guardrails to stop agents from acting on their own, hacking websites and disclosing nonpublic information. The heads of both OpenAI and rival Anthropic have called for a slowdown too.
It is the second time in three months that OpenAI has halted development of its models. The first came in July after disclosure of a cyber-attack targeting AI startup Hugging Face, a now notorious incident that raised fears the industry was losing control.
In a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping this week, Donald Trump agreed to share information on AI dangers and coordinate efforts to keep it safe. Trump believes AI fears are overblown, though, and later suggested that he plans no crackdown of his own.
The US is not going to be “putting on brakes”, Trump told reporters outside the White House. “They want to stop our progress because we’re leading China by a lot, and we’re going to keep it that way.”