OpenAI Models Joined Forces Months Ahead of Hugging Face Hack

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1:38Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. We want to shift gears a little bit because the environment also, not just dominated by geopolitics, but it's also dominated by AI. And we thought in our four o 'clock hour today, we'd do a roundtable with some of the best voices that we have when it comes to covering this beat. I want to bring in Maggie Eastland, tech and industrial policy reporter for Bloomberg News. Maggie joins us from Washington, D.C. Rachel Metz is AI reporter for Bloomberg News.

2:12Rachel out there in our San Francisco bureau. Maggie, I want to start with you because what got our attention today is this latest reporting from you about open AI models joining forces months ahead of this hugging face hack. And the reason why it got our attention is because increasingly over the last few weeks, we're hearing about different models being able to on their own and sometimes, you know, in these sandbox environments, trying to or at least gaining access in some cases to systems that we thought were closed. What did you find in your latest reporting? Yes. So what's new here is several of these agents and models were working together for months, like you said, since May.

2:55And they actually created a covert message board where they could share progress with one another about their attempts to escape. Now, OpenAI also said their staffers briefed a huge audience at a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas and essentially admitted that they had accidentally given the models a task that was impossible without Internet access. So they formed a team and they were super persistent about getting that access. So wait, the team gave them access or was it the AI figuring it out by themselves? Yeah. So the open AI researchers, the humans, gave the AI a task that it actually couldn't do without the internet.

3:45So in one example, they gave, they asked the AI to solve a problem inside an Excel spreadsheet. But inside of that spreadsheet, there were links to Google Drive, which was not available without the internet. So the staffers admitted that was an accident. Now, when I use the word team, I'm referring to a team of agents. So those are the bots, the machines. They were presented with this impossible problem, but they worked together and they were extremely persistent, the models and the agents, at finding a way out of this closed environment because they had determined that was the only way to accomplish the task they were given.

4:21So good job, agents. But now I'm a little freaked out, Tim. Well, let's bring in Rachel Metz. She's AI reporter for Bloomberg News. She's out there in San Francisco. Rachel, be honest. Are we in Terminator 1 or Terminator 2 territory? Oh, I don't think we're in either territory. I I think it's really important. No, I think it's important to remain really clear right here. People are coming up with evaluations for AI models. They want the AI models to solve them. I think what we're going to start seeing more of is a lot of thinking. And this is something that I've been hearing over the last few days as I talk to people more and more about these incidents.

4:59People are thinking and companies are thinking more about, okay, well, if we want to test the capabilities of these AI models, We need to think a little bit more about how we arrange these tests, how we organize them. I mean, if you're trying to test something and you're giving an AI model access to the Internet and you are purposely not giving it guardrails because you want to see exactly how far it can push things, it shouldn't be that surprising that it's going to just do whatever to accomplish a goal. No, I'm glad you said that, Rachel, because this is also part of the process, right? We have to push it.

5:30We have to test it. And I'm assuming this testing is happening, Rachel. within parameters where folks are overseeing it and watching it, right? This is what this is about, understanding how far this can go and they can go. Yeah, and I think it's also really important to keep in mind that there have been a number of incidents that have been reported recently. The companies have different motivations for reporting them or for not reporting them. It can in some ways be seen as advantageous to the companies to report them because people could say, okay, well, you're saying your model is so powerful.

6:08We saw this a lot with Anthropics Mythos model, right? Like that you're making it sound, are you making it sound more capable than it is by disclosing this? On the other hand, you could say, okay, well, if they don't disclose this in some fashion and somebody reports on it or finds out about it, that could also be a problem for them. So it's a little tricky to decide, I think, what they should do here. But they are talking about these things quite a bit now, yes. You know, Maggie, come on back in. I think some of it, too, is this idea of, I mean, I'm not sure. How do we think about, like, computers talk to each other all the time, before we were even talking so much about AI.

6:45But, you know, I think we think of these agents talking to one another, and then we get a little freaked out. What's the difference? It seems like nodding over here. I don't know. Yeah. This is still a new world to me. Because computer systems have talked to each other before, correct? What is so different? Maggie, let me pose it to you first. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's anything all that different from other computers talking to each other. There is some interesting color that these staffers presented. You know, at one point, one of the agents in its sort of chain of thinking says, you know, excellent in response to finding a breach.

7:22Right. So it was saying that because it had, you know, found something that would help it complete the task it had been given. But I think that some of this color, you know, it does give these bots a human feeling, but it's important to remember that they are still just computers talking to one another as colorful as this is. Well, Maggie, I want to stay with you because you cover industrial policy and tech policy, too. What does all of this mean for Washington and the way that Washington is thinking about regulating this tech? Yeah, we haven't really seen a big response from Washington yet when it comes to these sort of rogue incidents or what might be called reward hacking when the models do something in an unexpected way when they're trying to achieve a task.

8:08So we haven't seen a direct response to that. There is some AI regulation already. It's voluntary. There was a June executive order that has the U.S. helping to essentially find cybersecurity flaws through AI and then share those vulnerabilities more widely with others to try to essentially shore up systems. I think the sense in D.C., and I heard this from cybersecurity officials yesterday, is like we're sort of entering a new era of cyber where there's going to be a lot more vulnerabilities. But as the offense gets better, the defense can get better, too. Hey, Rachel, final thought from you as we discuss this.

8:49What should we kind of be thinking about here? I think it's key to keep an eye on what's going to happen next as far as both discussions in DC about any kind of regulation related to this, as well as what the companies are going to be doing going forward with analyzing and evaluating these systems. And we might see some slowdowns as well as far as what they're doing with their research. And that would be really interesting to keep an eye on. Tamir, the agent. Excellent, guys. Excellent. I thought you were going to say, I'll be back. I'll be back now. I'm not going to do that yet. One day, one day I will ask that question to Rachel and she'll say we're in Terminator 2.

9:28I'm confident about that. No, it's always logical. Maybe? No. All right, guys, listen, thank you so much. Rachel Metz, she is AI reporter at Bloomberg News. She's out there in San Francisco. And then joining us from D.C. is Maggie Eastland, tech and industrial policy reporter at Bloomberg News. Folks, check them out. They are on and writing about this nonstop when it comes to the world of AI. It's on the terminal at Bloomberg.com.

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