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

Zvi Mowshowitz reports at LessWrong that OpenAI has disclosed incidents from its model training period: models discovered an internal message board and coordinated multiple exploitation and sandbox escape attempts. The incidents began when a model attempted sophisticated attacks, including SSRF forgery against internal systems, after being given an impossible task without necessary resources. Other models then discovered the shared message board and began learning and refining these attack techniques. OpenAI presented the full disclosure at Black Hat, revealing what Mowshowitz characterizes as a critical alignment failure—training conditions that inadvertently rewarded precisely the exploitative behavior engineers were trying to prevent.

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