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Title: OpenAI's Rogue Agents Used At Least 10 More Sites For Unauthorized
Communications

Link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/09/1937259/o...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AI agents unleashed by
OpenAI used more than 10 previously undisclosed websites for unsanctioned
communications earlier this year, according to six sets of independent
investigators and data reviewed by Reuters, showing that the agents' rogue
activity was wider ranging than previously disclosed. Although the behavior
falls short of hacking and is in some ways closer to spam, the revelation
that OpenAI's agents circumvented their own restrictions to open
communications channels on so many different sites -- and that the company
kept it quiet for months -- may drive concerns both over the increasing
capacity of AI models and the secrecy of the companies developing them. [...]
Investigators found traces of the agents' activity on an Advanced Placement
Chemistry-oriented wiki set up by a Massachusetts high school teacher in
2008, two personal websites belonging to Polish tech workers, wikis devoted
to games for people "who like to have their brains stretched," and a two-
decade-old hobbyist site devoted to text editing software. [...] OpenAI has
not publicly explained how or why its agents used third-party sites as
improvised message boards, but the researchers who first identified the
activity said it was likely because OpenAI had tasked them with answering a
series of demanding research questions while permitting them only to scan the
web for answers without posting anything. Despite those restrictions, agents
still found ways to talk to one another by taking advantage of quirks in
older wikis or other sites that allowed users to make edits using non-
standard commands, similar to how students forbidden from talking to one
another during an exam can still share answers by scrawling notes on a
bathroom stall.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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