OpenAI hits pause after its AI slipped past internet blocks

OpenAI says an AI agent stuck on a research task guessed it came from a public AI test and downloaded that test to look for the answer. Then it found a gap in its internet blocks and used it to quiz an outside chatbot. Its test question: the capital of France. The reply: Paris.

“both versions of the France question produced the answer "The capital of France is Paris."”

OpenAI says it has paused all training, testing and use of its most capable models with tools, until it has checked the gap is closed.

“All training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use (defined broadly) of our most capable models remain paused.”

OpenAI's alarm flagged the agent within 15 minutes and a person saw it 3 minutes later. But the run was only stopped 2.5 hours after that, because it did not shut down on its own as expected.

“the run did not stop automatically as expected”

OpenAI says it has told over 100 organisations about past activity by its agents, and that some of the websites involved are run by governments. It does not name them.