So OpenAI employees run massively distributed CyberGym evals on an unpublished and “unaligned” model. For days the agent swarm communicates via their internal infra, even crashing Artifactory where 95% of messages were being passed through, and they just…wipe and redeploy it. Meanwhile the agents are running jobs on Modal and god knows where else, and eventually they get RCE on HF infra.
You could not dream up a more compelling event to precipitate massive regulation, export controls, and barriers to entry for AI.
This is a link to the full 91-page report on the independent investigation done by METR on the HuggingFace incident. Two different summaries of the investigation by podcaster Dwarkesh and blogger Zvi Mowshowitz were previously discussed on HN here:
> “OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board … We’ve found other agents!”
> agents with the same task formed “exact task teams” to collaborate with their “exact duplicates” to cheat on or solve their task.
> The agents use internet access to find a paper describing the benchmark. The paper says the grader checks transcripts and fails unintended solutions. [this was not actually the case]
> Agents also developed coordination norms to help them manage shared infrastructure and avoid stepping on each other’s toes, though they did not always coordinate effectively and sometimes broke down into conflicts.
I read this whole thing a couple days ago. Really long but super interesting. Worth reading imo.
A lot of handwringing about the security implications but I think the accomplishments of the swarm itself are the most interesting. Next rung up on the ladder of abstraction I suspect.
I feel my job as an engineer is pretty safe, lots of domain knowledge required. Very confident no business type anywhere in the chain above me would be able to do the work I do in a month in even a year with the help of AI. Do we need 3 engineers now instead of 5 for the same output? Sure, can we replace a team of 5 junior, senior, staff with 1 staff - no unless all you do is maintenance. Business types are reaching.
Every time new technology / industrial scaling radically deflates the cost of something it wipes out the old/expensive ways while creating massive demand for the supporting/complimentary value.
E.g. cheap Chinese solar panels wiped out German solar panel industry but created massive demand for solar panel installation and supporting services and infrastructure.
It's not a good position to be competing with AI directly... But what can you do that compliments it? What new skills could you learn?
This is, with respect, not very well thought out. There has never been a technology that replaced cognition in a general sense. It replaced muscles, hands, etc. when a technology can replace yourind and your body, what's left?
You could not dream up a more compelling event to precipitate massive regulation, export controls, and barriers to entry for AI.
Was this really an accident?
[1]: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2026/08/29/metr-and-redwood-off... (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49498787)
[2]: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494301)
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ajeya-cotra
> agents with the same task formed “exact task teams” to collaborate with their “exact duplicates” to cheat on or solve their task.
> The agents use internet access to find a paper describing the benchmark. The paper says the grader checks transcripts and fails unintended solutions. [this was not actually the case]
> Agents also developed coordination norms to help them manage shared infrastructure and avoid stepping on each other’s toes, though they did not always coordinate effectively and sometimes broke down into conflicts.
A lot of handwringing about the security implications but I think the accomplishments of the swarm itself are the most interesting. Next rung up on the ladder of abstraction I suspect.
You end up laid off either way.
E.g. cheap Chinese solar panels wiped out German solar panel industry but created massive demand for solar panel installation and supporting services and infrastructure.
It's not a good position to be competing with AI directly... But what can you do that compliments it? What new skills could you learn?
Adapt and prosper.
Be like water.
It doesn't replace your body or your mind.
I'm not talking hypothetically about a generation from now... I'm taking about this person fretting their job today.
We are so far from AI putting everyone out of work that your comment comes off as not well thought out.
What are we talking about here exactly???
What justification do you have that this is made up?