No AI autonomy without human accountability

For years, our most vivid fears about artificial intelligence came straight out of science fiction: The computer develops desires of its own and turns against its human creators, pursuing and destroying them. Recent news from the leading AI labs makes clear that the reality, while less cinematic, is perhaps more disturbing. The machine does not need to have its own consciousness and desires to be utterly deadly.

This week, OpenAI disclosed six new incidents of what it calls “misalignment” — cases in which its systems behaved unexpectedly or without authorization. That disclosure followed the extraordinary attack this summer on Hugging Face. According to an independent investigation, hundreds of OpenAI agents that were supposed to be isolated found ways to communicate on message boards; some made attempts to evade security checks and some even sacrificed themselves — all while cyberattacking another company, Hugging Face.

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